How babysitting saved the World
by Evy Darkwood
Summary: Post-S5 AU. The Apocalypse is averted, and Dean tries to adjust to life. But a Winchester's life can't be too restful, and so Dean shouldn't be surprised when his little brother comes back as spirit. And Cas is back too, with a Civil War on his shoulders. Problem is, he has brought a little surprise. Eventually Destiel, minor spolilers from S6 to S9.
1. Chapter 1

_**Summary: **__Post-Season 5 AU. The Apocalypse is averted, and Dean tries to adjust to life as a civilian. But naturally a Winchester's life can't be too restful, and so Dean should not be surprised when his little brother comes back. And Cas is back too, with a Civil War on his shoulders... Problem is, he has brought with him a little surprise. _

_**Rating: **__T+_

_**Spoilers: **__basically only the names of some characters from season 6 to 9, even if there could be some spoilers here and there. This story considers only what happened from season 1 to 5._

_**Characters: **__Dean, Sam, Cas, Bobby, Lisa, Ben, Adam Milligan, Jody Mills, Balthazar, Gabriel and the Archangels, Meg, Crowley, Naomi and other random angels, Tessa, Charlie Brandbury, Kevin Tran and his mum, and plenty of cuteness. There will be some references about the Harvelles, John Winchester, and various other characters. _

_**Pairing: **__Dean/Cas, Sam/Female OC, Bobby/Jody Mills_

_**Warnings: **__No one, really. If you don't like male/male couples, don't read, because Dean is soooo coming out of his closet. If you like it, welcome! Be warned that there will be no graphic sex and the rating will not go up. If this is too vanilla for you, there are plenty beautiful stories out there._

_**Neither I or my partner in crime own Supernatural nor any of the characters. **__We are only sad fangirls without a real life._

_Now, just so you're prepared: there is a lot Lisa/Dean in the first chapter. Don't kill us, it's all for plot necessity, we swear! _

_Have fun :)_

**How Babysitting saved the world**

_**Prologue**_

Hannah looked down at her sandwich and started to feel a little queasy. She had thought she wanted it, but clearly she had been wrong. She threw it in the bin and sighed. She had never felt the need of feeding herself with human food in her long millennia of existence as Angel of the Lord. Not until now. She pressed her hand on her belly, biting her lower lip. She could feel it inside her, a new life forming inside her womb, and she was scared. It wouldn't have been possible. They said only God could do it, but they were wrong. It has happened, and there was no turning back. A big hand came to cover hers as her husband encircled her in a hug.

"Are you alright?" whispered Ezekiel kissing her temple. She smiled softly and turned to kiss him. He cupped her cheek with his hand and smiled against her lips.

"I'm alright. I'm just scared. Everything we did... It's forbidden. If someone discovers..."

"No one will ever know." he reassured her, twirling a lock of her dark hair around his fingers. She closed her eyes and pressed her face against Ezekiel's chest.

"I still can't believe. We are going to be _parents._" she said in an almost reverent breath. "No angel ever had children with another angel."

''I know. Do you remember the first time we saw each other?" he asked tenderly as he started to caress her hair and her back. She chuckled slightly.

"I've just been assigned to your garrison here on Earth. I'd never been more terrified in all my life. But you showed me all the good things of Earth. You taught me to love like humans love." she answered, lifting on her tiptoes to kiss him again. It had been a long way, until they learned how to love each other this way, not out of veneration or out of duty, but just because of what they were.

But if someone was to denunciate them to Raphael... The only idea frightened Hannah to the marrow. She had believed that, after Castiel and his human companions had averted the Apocalypse, she and Ezekiel could have lived a peaceful life on Earth. But instead, Raphael's iron grip was firmly around their throats. The Archangel had already killed sevenangels who went against orders, and Hannah was scared. She had almost resigned herself to return to Heaven and to never touch Ezekiel ever again... until the day she felt for the first time that newborn Grace inside hers.

"After this night, everything will be alright. Balthazar knows what he's doing." assured Ezekiel kissing her forehead. Hannah sighed deeply.

"He must be already waiting for us. Let's go." she said, parting from him. Ezekiel nodded and grasped her hand, taking it to his lips and pressing a kiss on her palm.

"I love you." he said softly.

"I love you too." she whispered back, and then she was gone in a rustle of wings. She felt the pull of leaving the physical plan inside her whole being as she stretched her wings, and the little life inside her pulsed like a second heart, deeply wrapped inside her Grace, like if it was happy to make its first fly. She smiled at the thought, then she flapped her wings with strength. They had something to do and no time for this. Not now.

She and Ezekiel both landed right on the edge of Heaven, where Balthazar was scanning the horizon with an apprehensive look in his eyes.

"Here you are. I was starting to believe you wouldn't show up at all." he said rushing toward them.

"We are here. Let's do this." answered briefly Ezekiel. Balthazar nodded.

"The armory is on the fifth Circle of Heaven. Ezekiel, you'll come with me. Haniel, you..."

"It's Hannah, now." she corrected him. He paused a second, giving her a surprised glance, then he went on like nothing happened.

"You'll have to guard until we take the weapons. If you hear something, give us the signal. When we get out, I'll take them to Castiel and give you the Staff of Enoch." he said, and Hannah nodded. The Staff was one of the most powerful artifacts of the Heavenly Host... the only one that could hide her and Ezekiel from Heaven's prying eyes for all the Time coming.

"Is Castiel really going to begin a civil war against Raphael?" asked Ezekiel in a low voice as the three of them flew through the second and third Circle. Balthazar pressed his lips in a tight line.

"I don't know. Castiel is not the little kid I knew anymore. He's very changed. Stronger. Prouder. I fear he could do something stupid. That's the reason I'll go hide in the exact moment he puts his hands on the weapons. He understands and has guaranteed his help." he explained.

Ezekiel nodded and let his Grace interweave with Hannah's in a reassuring way. She felt his concern and his love, and she felt stronger.

Entering the armory was easier than she had thought. Balthazar had carefully studied the place and the guards' routine, and they encountered no one as they made their way thought the Circles.

When Ezekiel and Balthazar went inside, anyway, Hannah began to feel restless and nervous. If they were discovered now, it would be death for all of them, and there was nothing Castiel could do about it. The more time passed, the more she felt scared. She felt her little angel moving restlessly in a corner of her Grace, deep inside her, and she tried to wrap it with all her warmth and love.

"Shsh, it's alright, little one... Daddy'll be alright..." she cooed.

Then she heard two voices coming nearer, and fear poisoned every inch of her spirit. She gave the signal and stayed paralyzed in her corner, hidden from sight and perception by a cloud, and praying without voice.

_Please, Father, if you can hear me, don't leave them find me or Ezekiel... please, Father..._

And somehow miracles still could happen, in Heaven, because the voices didn't approach anymore. But Hannah heard every single word, and what she heard would have frozen her blood if she had been in her vessel.

When the other angels finally took their leave, she gave the 'free way' signal to her husband and Balthazar, and they literally threw themselves down on Earth. The violence of landing was so intense she almost fell as she manifested again inside her vessel. Ezekiel looked at her a bit worried, but he didn't ask. She thanked their Father for it. For the first time in millennia, she didn't have any word for him.

As Balthazar gave to Staff to Ezekiel, Hannah decided to not say a word to them about what she heard. It was too big, it could destroy them all. She pressed both her hands on her belly, shaking with fear.

_Don't worry, little one, I'll protect you even if it'll cost my own life, _she thought, looking up at the sky. The stars shined like jewels in the dark of the night, like if nothing of it had happened, like she had just dreamed it, and as Balthazar wished them good luck and disappeared in a blink of eye, she passed her thin arms around Ezekiel's waist, wanting to believe they would be alright. He kissed the top of her head, pressing his nose in her hair, and she felt at home, safe and sound.

Little she knew that right in that moment Ezra, an angel of her former garrison, was spilling to a very interested listener all about how he had seen the angel Haniel kissing her brother Ezekiel, and how one could hear more than one heartbeat near her vessel. She didn't know how little time her little family had before Heaven's wrath fell on them.

She also didn't know about how, in that very moment, a certain Dean Winchester was waking up with a jolt in Lisa Braeden's bed, his skin covered in sweat from yet another nightmare and a curse against Heaven on his lips.

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OoOoOoOoOoO

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**Chapter 1**

Dean woke up with a barely repressed scream stuck in his throat. He sat up on the mattress, panting heavily and pressing his hand on the gray T-shirt he slept in and whose fabric was soaking wet with sweat.

He breathed deeply and cast a look down at Lisa. Luckily, she was still sleeping soundly, her thin arm elegantly stretched above her head, and she barely moved, murmuring something in her sleep, when Dean slowly stood up and headed to the bathroom. As he strode across the room, his eyes fell on Lisa's alarm clock. Five and half in the bloody morning. Freakin' great.

In the bathroom, he stared at his reflex in the mirror with a hostile expression plastered on his face. He looked pale and there were dark bags under his eyes. He sighed and threw some cold water on his face, hoping he wouldn't wake Lisa up. The poor girl had already endured enough from him in the past two months.

Dean actually believed Lisa should have been canonized. She took him in the house without batting an eyelid. That first night after... after what had happened, she had held him all night, and he had cried for the first time since he had been a little five year old who feared to appear weak to his father and Li'l bro. The following two weeks were a blurred picture in Dean's mind, as he has been dead-drunk for the majority of the time. He had kept drinking and drinking until Lisa had come and taken away the bottle, gentle but firm in her attitude.

"This is enough, Dean. You have to get a hold on yourself." she had said to him, and he had tried. Man, if he had tried. He had stopped with the drinking. He had started to look for a job, he had fixed her electrical system, and taught Ben how to win in a scuffle (even if he hadn't told Lisa _that, _of course).

There had been critical moments, of course. The first time he went to shop alone, he had to run away without buying anything, or he would have started screaming against all those stupid, ignorant, clueless idiots around him. He still couldn't read a newspaper without looking automatically for cases. He still had nightmares every single night, even if he hadn't told Lisa. He slept with saint water and a silver knife at arm's length. He refused flatly to touch Ben's laptop, and he would have been happy to never touch a laptop again. That was Sa- not Dean's cup of the.

But he was improving. He had started to smile when Ben chatted about school. He had helped Lisa with her nephew, and Lisa and her sister were so surprised about how much the baby liked him that they had arrived to propose to use him instead of the babysitter. Of course, he had refused. The child reminded him too much S-someone else. He had even taken Ben to a football game. He had started to live a normal life.

Then, one week ago...

Dean shuddered and stepped out of his pajamas and under the shower, turning the water so hot he could almost be boiled alive. Hot water was a luxury for him, who had lived in crappy motel rooms for almost his entire life. When he was sure that even the last leftovers of his nightmare had been washed away, he grabbed some clothes, tucked in Lisa under her duvet, and went down to the kitchen.

He looked inside the fridge and decided he could make pancakes for everyone that morning. He wasn't that good as cook, but the few things he could do (namely, burgers, omelets and pancakes) where actually quite good. He had had to learn, after all, it came from looking after- oh no, so not going down there. He straightened up and turned with the eggs in his hands, and then he saw it.

Something moved in the corner of his eyes, just a little twitch, but he was _sure _he had seen it, this time. There was _something _in Lisa's house, and he had no idea about what it was. It has been a week, a week of weird feelings and things that weren't in their place. Lisa kept saying it was his imagination, but he hadn't survived the freaking Apocalypse with _imagination_. Problem was, when Lisa had asked him what it was, he hadn't been able to answer. There was no magnetic field in the house, so no ghosts. And there was salt under every window, hex bags above every door and under the floor, and even devil's traps and Enochian sigils scattered around the house, in the most discreet places he had found. Dean was fairly positive nothing supernatural could enter the house. Nevertheless, he was almost sure he wasn't making stuff up.

Unless... unless he was losing his mind. It would have been about time, after all. He had expected it for years, so it wouldn't be a real surprise. He grimaced and glanced at his watch. A quarter to seven. Ben was going to wake up any minute. Dean gritted his teeth and stared at the point he had seen the twitch.

"Now I'll make breakfast, and when Lisa and Ben are out of the house, I'll hunt you down and kick your ass to Hell and back, you damned son of a bitch." he promised in a low growl. Nothing moved. He gave another spiteful glance to the kitchen, then he grabbed a frying pan and started to open the eggs.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

Sam sighed loudly and dropped his head on his hands, completely defeated. Count on Dean to make death-treats to thin air. Why, oh why had Sam got stuck with a brother whose first instinct was to kill everything that moved and only _then _asked, and Sam was quoting, 'what the hell was it?'?

With another sigh, Sam floated into the living room. He was exhausted, trying to get Dean's attention was completely draying out the younger Winchester's strength. He had tried since the moment he regarded his conscience about a week ago, but so far he had been completely unsuccessful.

It had been a bit of a shock, waking up in the middle of nowhere, in the field where the Apocalypse had not happened, after he had resigned himself to an eternity of pain in the Cage. A bigger shock had been to find his half brother Adam there with him, pale and traumatized but apparently quite fine. Well, he was a spirit, of course, like Sam, meaning no one could see, touch or hear them, but if one overlooked that little detail, they were both very much unscathed.

The biggest shock for Sam had been to discover _how _they got to be like this in first place. Michael saved them. _Michael, _the guy who was ready to blow up half the planet to kill his own brother. When he had understood they were falling inside the Cage, the Archangel had grasped Sam's soul and thrown it out along with Adam's. The pain of being touched by the celestial being had been so great they had blacked out for more than a month, until they had woken up together in that bloody field.

At the beginning, Sam had believed that they were dead, and that some Reaper was bound to come and take them away, but that hadn't happened. Even so, they clearly were not normal ghosts, because when Sam had decided to find his brother to see if he was alright, he and Adam hadn't been affected by the salt or the hex bags Dean had placed all over the place.

Apparently, they weren't dead, but they clearly weren't alive either. They needed help. And Dean could give it to them... if only he knew they were there in first place.

"Why is it always me?" asked sadly Sam floating next to Adam, who was sprawled on the couch staring gloomily at Lisa's carpet.

"Still nothing, then?" he asked Sam, turning his head to face his half brother. Sam shook his head and passed a hand through his hair. It felt real under his fingers, and his skin felt warm under the early morning sun. No, they weren't dead for sure.

"Nope. He got there is something in the house, but he wants to hunt it down." he informed darkly Adam, who pulled a face and gave a sour look to the kitchen, where a still sleepy Ben had just sat at the table.

"And ain't it just _great._" he drawled straightening up. Sam shrugged.

"I had a feeling this could happen." he said tiredly. "I was thinking... maybe you could try to go to Bobby's."

Adam regarded him with a skeptical glare.

"You mean the old drunken man in a wheelchair who cuffed me on the bed?" he asked lifting an eyebrow. Sam really found appalling how much Adam resembled Dean, sometimes.

"He could notice you. Not like that idiot of our brother there." he said, and Adam tilted his head back with a bored expression.

"Sure. I'll go immediately. One little perk of being like this is that you don't have to pay the ticket on the bus." he huffed. Sam laughed shortly and ruffled the younger boy's hair.

"You're an incurable optimist." he mocked.

"It comes from being dead." sneered Adam slapping away Sam's hand. Sam laughed again and let himself relaxing on the couch. They stayed like that for a while, until Adam stood up with a sigh.

"I gotta go." he said with a shrug. Sam nodded, but he couldn't help a little a pang in the heart as Adam went to the door.

"Adam." he called. "Be careful."

Adam turned his head slightly and gave Sam a lopsided smile.

"I'd say I've already got my dose of rotten luck, haven't I?" he said, then he passed through the door and was gone, leaving Sam alone in a house where no one could see him. Sam sighed sadly and jumped to his feet, stretching his back and arms. Dean was going to acknowledge Sam's presence, today, and that was it.

SNSNSNSNSNSN

If Dean had been worried about that eventuality in the morning, by the middle of the afternoon he was downright terrified.

He was going nuts. There was no other possible explanation. He had double checked the salt lines, and they were all intact. The EMF had been as mute as a fish in every single corner of the house. He had used summoning spells and tracking spells, and no one of them had worked, not to mention Lisa's kitchen resembled an awful lot a refugee camp under bombs now. He had arrived to the length to call a psychic who lived in town and ask him if he could perceive anything. There had been no results. There was nothing there in the house. _Nothing. _

The only possible explanation was that his brain had been so much focused on monsters and vengeful spirits that now that there was nothing to worry about it had come up with an imaginary ghost. Or maybe it was all the nightmares' fault: he had tried so bad to remove them, that now they were tormenting him even when he was awake.

Dean wondered if that shrink Lisa had tried to send him to hadn't been that bad of an idea, after all. But no, what could he say to the guy, '_I passed my whole life killing supernatural sons of a bitch and now I see them in my head'?_

That was surely going to work.

He went down in the garage and threw the EMF in a corner of the Impala's trunk. He stroked affectionately the car, wondering if driving it for a while could help him to forget about his nightmares. He opened the door and tapped with two fingers on the dashboard. When he turned the key, the tape cassette he had forgotten in started to sound in a very high volume.

_By the last breath of the fourth winds blow_

_Better raise your ears_

_The sound of hooves knocks at your door_

_Lock up your wife and children now_

_It's time to wield the blade_

_For now you have got some company._

_The Horsemen are drawing nearer_

_On the leather steeds they ride_

_They have come to take your life_

_On through the dead of night_

_With the four Horsemen ride_

_or choose your fate and die..._

He turned the engine off in a rush with a loud curse. He pressed his forehead on his baby's wheel, shaking with nerves. Oh, wasn't it awesome, now he couldn't even listen to Metallica without thinking about the Apocalypse. He breathed deeply, then he decided he needed a beer. He had promised to Lisa he would be careful with his drinking, but surely one beer couldn't be too dangerous, could it? But no, it was better to avoid any temptation. He wasn't going to end like his father.

He rushed into the house, but something caught his attention. The curtain in the living room was fluttering slightly, like moved by a gentle breeze. Dean closed his eyes, then opened them. He repeated the process, breathing slowly, but the damned curtain was still moving. With the window closed. He cursed.

_I'm becoming crazy. There isn't any ghost here. I know it, I used the EMF. It must be the wind from another room. It MUST be._

He changed his mind. It was really time for a beer. Better two. Or three.

After he had drunk them, he felt a little more relaxed. But that didn't change the fact that he was losing it. He grabbed his cell from the living room's table and dialled a number he knew by heart.

"Lisa?" he said. "I know you're at work, but... I need you here. I think I'm going crazy."

SNSNSNSNSNSN

"I really hate you sometimes, you know?"

Sam was exasperated. For the whole day he had tried to get his brother's attention, again and again, but he only had managed to make him more and more nervous. In that moment Dean was even saying to Lisa that he was really starting to be worried about his mental sanity.

"You are not crazy, you idiot! I'm right here!" he shouted waving his arms like an obsess. Nothing. No reaction. Like speaking to the wind. Damned spiritual plane.

"I really hope that Adam will have more luck with Bobby." he sighed to himself. But he didn't really believe it.

"Dean, you need to calm down." ordered Lisa with a firm voice. Dean was pacing back and forth across the room, his hands clenched in fists and his jaw set in a hard line.

"How can I calm down?! I see things, Lisa! What the hell am I supposed to do about that?!" he thundered. Lisa crossed her arms and gave him a stern look. Well, actually, since Sam was between her and Dean, she gave it to Sam. Not that she could have known about it.

"You'll scare Ben." she scolded Dean. At Lisa's words, Dean had gone very white and had stopped screaming. He stopped pacing and marched toward Lisa. He didn't even notice he had passed through Sam in the process. Sam sighed loudly. Well, it wasn't worse than the time Ben had sent a ball right through his skull. Twice. Some part of his mind had asked how was that Dean like the child so much. Ok, maybe that was kind of a mean thought, but, hey, it was his skull.

Dean sat on the couch, with his wide shoulders crooked and his head between his hands.

"I'm so sorry, Lisa. You did already too much, you don't need me to pull this shit on you." he mumbled lowly. Lisa sighed and put a hand on his back in a soothing gesture.

"Do you want something to eat? You didn't have dinner." she proposed quietly. Dean nodded without even looking up and didn't seem to acknowledge when Lisa went to the kitchen to find him a sandwich.

Sam dropped himself next to his brother, feeling more tired than ever. Not sleeping was definitely _not_ a perk of being a spirit, he literally craved for some rest. But it wasn't like Dean got too much sleep either, after all.

"I'm sorry, man. I didn't want you to go nuts." he mumbled to Dean, knowing very well that his older brother couldn't hear a word.

How was it possible that his life sucked so much? One would think he got the right to have at least a little luck, by now, but no, of course not, he got to send his brother into an asylum instead. Wasn't it enough to be the Antichrist, Lucifer's vessel and all that crap? He shuddered at the memory of Lucifer, remembering all that twisted darkness around his soul, that pain, that _rage _inside him. What had scared him the most had been that he and Lucifer _were_ similar. There had been something in Lucifer, a loneliness, a stubborn pride that matched Sam's owns. To be chained inside the Archangel's Grace had been like being bonded hands and feet to a rocket. Sam shook his head, trying to erase the memory, but what came into his mind was the moment when he had pushed both Lucifer and Michael in the Cage, and Lucifer's hatred had hit him with full power. In that moment, he had believed he was going to die.

Then, he had felt an unbearable pain on his forearm. Or at least he remembered it like that for absence of better words. It had been an awful lot like being burned alive and stabbed with poisoned knives at the same time. Of course, now he knew it had been the moment when Michael had thrown him out of the Cage. To think he had always thought Michael was a douche bag. He wondered idly if he was going to have a burning mark on his arm, like the one Castiel's left on Dean's shoulder when he saved the older Winchester from Hell.

That, admitting that Sam was going to retrieve his physical body, and he was starting to be not too sure about that.

"No way!" Dean's voice roused Sam from his thoughts.

_What the hell? _He asked to himself

"Then what are you going to do, stay there and thinking you are crazy until you really go mad? Call your angel friend!" demanded Lisa. Sam wondered when the discussion had become so heated. It looked like he had thought too much about what happened to Adam and him. But calling Cas was a good idea. A _brilliant _idea. And surely Dean wanted to see Cas again, since they had grown so close...

"Forget it. Every time I call him, he brings problems!" growled Dean.

Lisa shook her head with an exasperated expression. Sam felt fairly sure he and Lisa were thinking exactly the same thing.

_My brother is an ass._

"Listen, Dean. I don't know much of what had happened to you and Sam-"

Dean flinched at the name, but Lisa didn't stop.

"-But I gather you and this Cas are good friends. I'm sure he'll help..."

"Oh, really?" snapped Dean. "Because he helped _so much_ these past months." He breathed heavily and started to pace again.

"You have seen him around, haven't you? Oh, you'd think he could show up once in a while and ask how I'm doing, but no, clearly he doesn't give a crap now that he doesn't need my help anymore!" he yelled. Sam stared, completely stunned. Rarely Dean had lost so completely his control in front of Sam, he always had to show his big brother's facade. But now the facade was down, and Sam could see just how much is brother was hurt by Cas' silence. Lisa could see it too, because she stood up and took Dean's hand between her own.

"Maybe he would have if you had asked him." she said quietly. Dean looked down, frowning, but when he lifted his eyes again, his expression was grim.

"I don't want to call him. That's all." he deadpanned, then he pulled away his hand and stormed out of the room. Lisa sighed deeply and sat on the couch, closing her eyes in exhaustion.

"He's not always that bad. But I guess you'd know." said Sam to her. He lied next to her, sighing as well.

"Even if he can be a real pain the ass." he muttered.

Yep, his life was _definitely _crap.

**SNSNSNSNSNSNSN**

"We need to choose the name" said Hannah out of the blue.

"Now?" asked Ezekiel in surprise. They were sitting together on the couch, watching some silly TV show no one of them was really interested in, but that they watched anyway just for being together. Hannah had her head on her husband's chest and he had put his arm around her slender waist, but at her words he straightened up a little and watched down at her with a frown.

"Yes" answered Hannah. She seemed... worried.

"And why is it an urgent necessity?"

"We _should_ choose the name. Better?"

"But there isn't any urgenc-"

"Now." she snapped.

"Ok. Now. Why were you not clear about it before?" For the look that she shot at him, Ezekiel understood that it was better if he just shut up. He was really becoming tired of this pregnancy. One day she was normal, the next tending to tears and the one after that angry at who knows who. And then normal again, sometimes for days. The fact that it wasn't even a normal pregnancy didn't help. At barely two and half months, Hannah was showing like a woman in her third trimester.

_Hormones_, he thought. He didn't know how much he was wrong.

"What about Adriel?" he asked, pressing his mouth on her forehead.

"'Follower of God'? It's cute. I was thinking about 'Daniel'. 'God is judge.' What do you think?" she asked nuzzling against him. He chuckled and kissed her.

"It's perfect." he said softly.

Then, he tensed. There was something at the corner of his perception, something like...

'Hannah. Run." he said pushing her away. She stood up, her eyes widened with surprise and fear.

"Ezekiel, what..."

"RUN!" thundered Ezekiel, just a second before the door of their little flat was blown up in a mess of high shrilling. Ezekiel drew his angelic blade and stood between Hannah and the newcomer.

"Hello, Nathaniel." he said politely. "How did you find us?"

Nathaniel stared coldly at him and lifted his sword.

"Give me our sister and the fruit of your abomination, and I'll not hurt you." he deadpanned. Ezekiel didn't lower his blade.

"Hannah, you have to go. We'll meet where we kissed for the first time." he whispered. Hannah shook her head, her pale cheeks wet with tears.

"My love..." she called.

"Think about the baby, Hannah. Go!" demanded Ezekiel. Hannah kept shaking her head, but then she pressed her hands on her swollen belly, and she took a step backward. Nathaniel growled and threw himself against her, but Ezekiel's blade appeared in front of his eyes, stopping him. Hannah cried and disappeared into thin air as Ezekiel's blade clashed with Nathaniel's, sparks flying from the heavenly metal. Ezekiel found a weak point and hit his adversary, who hissed in pain and jumped backward, his shoulder wet with his vessel's blood.

"You are dead, brother." he spat. Ezekiel spun the blade in his hand and smiled tightly.

"I'm not so sure about it." he answered with a snarl, then he threw himself against Nathaniel once again.

The two angels crashed and clashed against each other, and every time it was like a thunder had hit the earth. The walls trembled around them as they battled each other. Ezekiel's blade found another spot and pricked Nathaniel's skin, pouring Grace and blood everywhere on the floor. Ezekiel fought like a machine, not even feeling pain from his own wounds, and with a last, strong blow he disarmed his opponent.

He towered over Nathaniel, panting, and pointed his blade against the other angel's throat.

"Now you'll tell me who sent you and why." he hissed. Nathaniel blinked and shook his head.

"You poor, naive Ezekiel. You have no idea..." he whispered as he drew another blade from his suit and pushed it right through Ezekiel's heart.

Ezekiel looked down at his chest and moved his lips, but no sound came out as the cold metal of the blade bit his flesh and Grace.

_Hannah..., _he thought, then everything dissolved in white light.

_I'm sorry, my love. So sorry..._

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_Yeah, we basically introduced Zeky just so we could kill him. We're such bad people...__ Anyway, Hannah, Ezekiel, Nathaniel and Ezra are all minor characters from Season 9 (even if Hannah got more screen). We've no idea if Hannah is really called Haniel or not, we just like the sound of it. It's us, or someone in Supernatural has a thing about that name? Anna, Annie, Ann, Hannah... must be someone's girlfriend._

_Everyone knows Balthy, so he doesn't need introductions._

_Someone interested? Please give us feedback! If you review, we'll give you candies! And puppies. Everyone loves puppies. _


	2. Chapter 2

_All for you, the new chapter Be happy, now there is a bit of Cas/Dean! Have a little faith, Lisa will disappear within the next two chapters and it will be Destiel's zone from there. _

_A quick explanation: in this fiction Raphael has a female vessel. There are so few female characters in this show..._

_We saw people enough reading the first chapter... so... reviews? Please? *stares at you with puppy eyes* Suggestions and ideas are welcomed! _

**Chapter 2**

Dean Winchester was notoriously a very stubborn man. And when he wanted to, he could really overdo himself.

Even so, he usually didn't have to hold against the insistence of a woman such as Lisa Braeden, a single mother with a less-than-idyllic childhood in the Hispanic district. She brought up the matter every time she could, which for her was every single time she saw Dean, until after three days of not exactly subtle hints, Dean was forced to surrender.

"If I call him and he doesn't show up, will you stop pEsthering me and let me call Missouri Mosely?" he almost pleaded, and at Lisa's positive answer, he sat on the corner of the couch, glaring ferociously at her.

"I'm doing it to prove a point. He isn't going to answer. He's too stuck with his fucking 'holier than thou' attitude." he said sullenly, with what resembled dangerously a pout.

Lisa just smiled and unfolded her arms.

"Humor me." she answered, tapping her leg with her fingers. Dean muttered something under his breath that sounded an awful lot like "bloody women", but he closed his eyes and made some attempt to join his hands.

"Cas? Hey man, I know you're pretty busy right now, but I really need to speak with you." he said.

Nothing happened. Dean opened his eyes and his glare darted to Lisa.

"See? Told ya." he said, almost smug. Lisa hid a laugh under her hand.

"Maybe he hasn't heard you." she said, waving her hand. Dean muttered a curse and closed his eyes again.

"Cas, I'm feeling an idiot down here, so you better come here _now_, or I'll kick your ass to the Perdition and back!"

Lisa sighed. This was going to be a looooong afternoon.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

Castiel's eyes darted warily back and forth between his aggressors as he stood up, one blade in both his hands and his immense wings wide open behind his back. One of the angels tightened his grasp around his own blade and launched forward. Castiel ducked and spun to face one of the other angels, who was trying a blow from behind, and in that moment he felt something pulling at his Grace. He froze in mid air, his wings beating on both sides of him.

_Dean?_

Raphael's angels took advantage of his momentary confusion and attacked all together_._

Raphael had far more followers than Castiel, not because the Archangel was more loved among the ranks of the Host, but because the ones who didn't approve her behavior didn't think that a mere Seraph like Castiel could win over an Archangel. Castiel really hoped they were wrong. He took down two angels with a blow, but he wasn't so lucky with the other two. They were faster than the others and the angelic swords clashed against each other, generating sparks before being torn apart by the fighters. They started to fly warily around each other, waiting for the next move.

Castiel was surprised. He hadn't heard about Dean in two months, and he had thought Dean didn't want to hear about him and his family at all. He felt strange about it. He didn't know if it made him happy or- he felt another pulling. Taking advantage of Castiel's distraction, one of his enemies nearly hit one of the great black wings. Castiel dived and threw all his weight on one of the two angels. The angel tried to grasp Castiel's neck, but Castiel's blade drilled through his throat, and the angel fell in a mess of feathers and dying Grace.

Castiel flapped his wings and gained velocity. He had to return to his army as soon as possible. He was starting to think that maybe coming back in that part of Heaven and trying to negotiate with Raphael had _not_ been a good idea, after all. And to think that Rachel had said that much to him.

The last angel roared with rage and dived toward Castiel, the point of his blade aimed against Castiel's heart, in the exact moment a third pull disturbed Castiel's Grace.

_Sorry Dean,_ thought Cas while dodging the other blade, even if he knew that Dean couldn't hear him.

_I really cannot come right now_.

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"See?" said Dean at the end of his last 'prayer' "Completely useless!"

Lisa slowly rubbed her temples. Dean was being really immature about all this thing. At least he had given up to Lisa demanding and had tried to call the angel. Even if seemed that he had been right saying that Castiel wasn't going to answer.

"Maybe with a bit of manners-" she suggested uncertainly. She didn't know anything about this angel, but she had thought that a prayer would have been enough.

"I said please, didn't I?" Dean interrupted her. Curiously, she noticed that he was angrier than before. Like if that wasn't going as he had thought, even if he had been the one convinced it was useless to call in the first place.

"Yes, but you also called him 'useless feathered asshole' at least three times, so…"

He didn't answer and send a wishing look to the bar table.

"Forget it. Don't even try." Lisa scolded immediately him.

Dean snorted, but didn't try to take a bottle. Instead, he called for Cas again. But with more curses this time.

Lisa was really starting to think that maybe she hadn't had such a good idea when she had told him to call this Castiel one.

After some other lines that seemed more a death threat that a prayer, Dean threw his hands up and stood up with a jerk.

"You know what? Let's forget all this stuff. If I have to hallucinate, I don't need that nerd to tell it to me. I'm going to take Ben from his soccer training." he announced. Lisa put her hand on his forearm.

"I'm very sorry." she apologized. Dean huffed and leaned forward to give her a peck on the mouth, grasping the car keys with one hand and caressing her neck with the other.

"Don't be." he said, but his tone of voice was sour. "It's not your fault he's an ass. See you later."

He went out, slamming the door behind his shoulders. Lisa winced and passed a hand through her long, dark hair. She was starting to be really worried.

SNSNSNSNSNSN

"Where are you, Cas?" wondered sadly Sam as he floated in the garden.

He had never had the same deep bond that his brother shared with the angel, but he had come to consider Castiel a friend. Their beginnings hadn't been very good, since Cas used to think that Sam was an abomination fed with demon blood, the Antichrist, the monster, the killer of humanity and so on, but with time the angel had overlooked his first impression and had become a friend. At least, Sam considered him a very good friend.

He was very surprised by Castiel's silence, right now. Even in the middle of the battle, Cas had always answered to Dean. Always. It was just like things were. Something was going on in Heaven, but Sam has simply no way to know what.

He wondered if he should keep trying to contact Dean or if he had to stop. He didn't want to take Dean too much on the edge, and ruining his life with Lisa. And speaking about Lisa, she came out in the garden and walked right through Sam. He winced.

She had a very tensed expression, and she was speaking on the phone with her sister. And it looked like she was talking about Dean.

"No... no, I know. It's just... he's not happy here with me and Ben, sis. Believe me, I know. He's tensed, and nervous, and I don't... Yes, but... No. No. It's complicated..."

She sighed sadly and nodded two or three times, listening.

"Yeah. Maybe. I'll try. Give a kiss to the baby for me." she said ending the phone call. She sat on the steps in front of her door and put her chin on her wrists, sighing sadly.

"What can I do to help you, Dean?" she whispered, staring in front of her. Sam floated next to her, aching to comfort her and more frustrated than ever by his inability to be touched or seen.

"He does care about you. He's just terrible at showing it." he said kindly to her, but at the moment the words left his mouth, he realized they were even more correct than he had initially thought. Yes, Dean undoubtedly cared about Lisa, he loved her and Ben, but he wasn't _in_ love with her. Not like Sam had thought, at least, not with the deep, abiding love Dean was able to give.

Sam sighed even more loudly than Lisa and sat at her side.

"I really made a mess, saying him to come here and get that apple pie life, didn't I?" he asked sadly. Naturally, Lisa didn't answer. Sam sighed again. He wondered how Adam was doing.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

Adam was bored. Bored behind any definition of the word 'bored'. He was so bored that even the prospective of the Cage was starting to seem more appealing than this. Michael wasn't that bad, after all. Not exactly the soul of the party, but he was almighty, after all. He knew a lot of interesting stuff.

Adam sighed loudly and floated around the table, looking down at Bobby with a conceited glance. He waved childish his hand in front of the old hunter's face, knowing very well he wasn't going to be seen. He arrived to poke his stupid hat, without result. He wondered if he could manage to destroy the liquor cabinet. _That _was bound to catch the old freak's attention.

"You know, seeing that Dean is as smart as you, Sam and I aren't going anywhere, because, you see, you are pretty much an idiot." he sneered. And still nothing. Probably the walls were more receptive than Bobby. "And you smell. Like a liquor shop. And you are fat. C'mon, I'm insulting you, you old man!"

_But doesn't he have any self-consideration?_

He sighed, while listening Bobby screaming at one of his numerous phones. Again. He really screamed a lot. It was surprising how he hadn't lost his voice yet. It was likely the forty call he received in a day. And it was only midday. Ok, the first one had been at three AM, but still… Adam was pretty sure all that yells were bound to damage the man's throat. He never finished his studies in medicine, but it seemed a pretty good guess. A little part of him asked if he would never come back to university. He immediately shut it up.

"It's no 'cause I said NO, ya' idijt!" shouted Bobby.

Silence.

The poor guy at the other end of the line - Garth, if Adam had heard the name correctly - was probably trying to reason with him. Adam laughed at the thought. From what he had seen try to reason with Bobby was worse than trying to reason with a radio controlled tank. And not, he was NOT overreacting. He caught some words, there and here. It looked like they were speaking about a nest of vampires, and for some reason Bobby didn't want that Garth took care of it.

"Because I trust the girls more than ya, that's why! And don't even think 'bout disturb 'em or I'll cut ya into pieces!" he screamed. Then he hung up without waiting for an answer.

_What a lord. Made for Buckingham Palace,_ thought sarcastically Adam.

"So…. Are you always this lovely? Maybe I'm not so unlucky if you don't see me. And who are the girls? Are they something that I can like?" he wondered hopefully out loud. He hadn't got laid since... well, ok, basically since he had been eaten by a ghoul. Of course, hitting on a girl in his current state wasn't exactly simple, but a guy can dream...

One of the phone - God only knew _which_ of them - started to ring. Adam let go a loud sigh and dropped his face in the crotch of his arms.

"Man, but there's not anything like peace here?! Sam is soooooo going to hear me about this…" he whined.

Bobby managed to get the right phone in less than a second. "FBI, agent Robert Beaver … _GARTH, YA'DJIOT! STOP CALLIN' ME!"_

One thing had really to be said about this Garth bloke. He didn't know how to take a 'no'.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

Castiel landed with a loud thump, kneeling down on the ground and breathing fast. He carefully let go the body in his arms and took the hand someone was offering him- Inias.

"Castiel? Are you hurt?" the angel asked with concern. Other angels were standing behind Inias's gray wings, trying to see what was going on.

"I knew this was going to happen." muttered Rachel, shaking her long hair. Castiel stood up and shook his head.

"I'm fine. It's just a scratch." he said, waving his hand at his bleeding wing. "But this one needs help." His wing did actually hurt a lot, but he didn't want to appear weak in front of so many angels. It was already difficult enough to prove himself worthy of leading them without showing his weakness.

Rachel looked down at the bleeding angel on the ground.

"He's one of Raphael's." she hissed with disgust. Castiel grimaced.

"I know. He attacked me with another three. I killed them. I fear this means war." he announced gravely, and a whisper passed through the ranks of angels as they looked at each other in fear. An angel with a female vessel and dark wings came out from the multitude and walked toward Castiel, her hand lifted. Castiel recognized her as Azrael, one of the few healers (or Rit Zien, as they preferred to be called) who hadn't followed Raphael.

"Castiel, let me see that wing. I can-" she said, but Castiel drew back and pointed at the unconscious angel at their feet.

"Tend to him first." he ordered briskly. Azrael's face frowned in confusion.

"He's an enemy..." she said uncertainly.

"He's our brother. We are not going to slaughter each other pointlessly, like Raphael seems so willing to do. Do as you have been told." snapped back Castiel, with more rage than he would have liked. Azrael recoiled and bowed her head.

"Yes, commander." she mumbled. Castiel sighed and put his hand on her shoulder.

"I'm sure you'll be able to save him. Ask Samandriel to stay with you, I don't want to leave you without protection near a potential menace." he said more gently. Azrael sniffed and kneeled down, leaning over the wounded angel with an inscrutable expression.

Castiel nodded and turned his shoulders at the Rit Zien and the wounded angel.

"Rachel, Bartholomew, Esther and Inias." he said to his lieutenants. "Follow me. We have a war to plan."

Inias bit his lower lip with a concerned expression, but it was Bartholomew to utter everyone's thought.

"Wouldn't you prefer to rest a little? You are wounded. And we can announce what happened to the rest of us, meanwhile." he said, passing his tongue at the corner of his jaws. While a lot of angels used their vessel's appearance in Heaven, Bartholomew had opted for a lion-headed man, while Esther had three heads, one of them in the shape of a snake.

Castiel thought about it for a second, then he nodded.

"Very well. I'll see you within two days in Earth time." he said, then he spread out his wings and left the celestial level of reality with one, powerful beat.

There was something on Earth he had to do.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

Lisa re-entered in the house feeling a little better. Speaking with her sister always had that effect on her. She took the basket of dirty clothes from the bathroom and headed to the basement, where she kept the washing machine. It was really appalling how many clothes Ben managed to cover with filth and mud in a few days... even if Dean wasn't that better.

_Maybe males simply attract dirt, _she thought.

She switched on the washing machine humming a song, then she turned to return upstairs... and she crushed against a man standing in the middle of the room, exactly where there had been nothing a second before.

Lisa yelled and jerked back, pointing her trembling finger at the stranger.

"Who... who the hell are you? How did you enter in my house?" she yelled hysterically. The man tilted his head and stared at her with his deep blue eyes in a manner that resembled clinical attention.

"I'm looking for a man named Dean Winchester. Where is he?" he asked with a deep voice. Lisa stared with her jaw completely dropped.

"You... you are Cas." she said, too stunned to elaborate further. She had imagined him to be completely different. She had had some confuse ideas about a scary being with a thundering voice, while the man in front of her looked meek and harmless... if not for those eyes.

He squinted at her with some curiosity, then he nodded shortly.

"I am Castiel. Is Dean here?" he asked again. Lisa blinked and started to laugh nervously.

"Well, yes... I mean, not now, but he's coming here... he was so sure you weren't going to answer him..." she tried to explain. The angel frowned in confusion, his eyes round with surprise.

"If I can, I always answer when he calls." he deadpanned like it was the most obvious thing in the universe. Lisa stared at him and played nervously with the hem of her shirt. She was starting to feel pretty uncomfortable under the angel's glare.

A loud thump from above told Lisa Ben and Dean were at home. Finally. She had never been so glad to hear Ben slamming the front door.

"Follow me. These must be them." she said, passing Castiel and taking the stairs. The angel immediately followed her as she headed to the door to receive Dean and her son.

At the sight of Castiel, Ben's mouth became an 'O' of pure curiosity, while Dean stooped death on the spot, his mouth slightly open. A myriad of emotions - surprise, relief, happiness, incredulity - followed one another on his face, until he set on one: pure rage.

Castiel tilted his head and the corners of his mouth went up in something that resembled a half smile.

"Hello, Dean." he said. Dean blinked and dropped Ben's bag on the floor.

"Ben, go take a shower." he ordered briskly. Ben pulled a face and gave a look to his mother.

"But..." he started. Lisa gave him her best 'mommy's glare'. Taking the hint, Ben snapped his mouth closed and run upstairs, stamping the floor to show his annoyance. Lisa laughed lightly, then she returned her attention to the men - well, the man and the angel - in her hallway.

Dean was staring firmly at the ground. His jaw was set in a hard line and his fists were clenched with strength enough to whiten his knuckles. Lisa was confused. She had rarely seen Dean so angry, and she never would have thought the famous Castiel would have that effect on Dean.

Dean let go a deep breath and looked up with burning green eyes.

"Why the fu-" he started.

"_Ben is home!"_ Lisa hissed, raising her voice in time to stop him.

"-Hell did it take you so much?" Dean ended with a snarl.

The angel didn't answer immediately, but he only cocked his head and looked at Dean with those beautiful blue eyes. Lisa couldn't help but smiling. Yes, they were surely unnerving, but she had never seen such a beautiful shade of blue. Dean hadn't told her that the angel was so cute. But he hadn't even said that he stared so much. And, curiously, Dean was trying to avoid that stare as much as he could.

_There is DEFINETLY something here. And I'm going to figure out what it is, _she thought.

"I was... elsewhere involved. I came as soon as possible, Dean." said the angel apologetically, with a face that resembled closely a kicked puppy. Lisa felt very sorry for him.

Dean burst out with a harsh laugh.

"For _two months_? Must have been one hell of an occupation." he said sourly, not looking at Castiel again. Lisa was stunned. Dean never looked directly at the angel for more than two minutes. Castiel bowed slightly his head.

"It was my belief you didn't wish to hear about me and my family." he answered quietly. Dean lifted his head with a jerk, looking right into the angel's eyes.

"I can think with my own head. Stop presuming that you know what I want." he snarled. Castiel looked away, annoyance visible in every inch of his face.

"I've never presumed..." he began with a petulant tone.

"Why don't we go in the living room? I'll take you something to drink!" Lisa stepped in with a bright voice. Luckily, her attempt to divert a conflict worked, because Castiel closed immediately his mouth and stared stubbornly at his feet, while Dean gave a last blazing look to the angel and strode pass him and toward the living room. After a second, Castiel followed him and ended sitting very stiffly on the edge of a chair.

Lisa put a glass of cold water in Dean's hand, hoping to cool him down, then she turned to the angel.

"I'm not really sure about what you could like..." she said hesitantly. What did the angels drink? Dean never said anything about it.

Castiel finally looked away from the floor and placed his eyes on Lisa once again. It was her, or he didn't blink as often as humans usually did?

"I do not require nutriment nor drinks, thank you." he said politely. Dean snorted ad sipped at his water, regarding it with contempt.

"Figures I dreamt about that time you were drunk." he drawled with heavy sarcasm. Castiel opened his mouth to rebut, but then he frowned and turned his head, like he had heard something strange. He seemed a little confused.

"What the hell are you staring at?" snapped Dean. Castiel didn't answer immediately, but on his face was slowly forming a smile.

"Hello, Sam." was all the angel said.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

When Balthazar went to open the door, he was expecting a list of things. It could have been his dinner, ordered in a very sophisticated restaurant near his place. It could have been that last fine painting he had bought the previous week. It could even have been that lovely miss he met two days before at that wine tasting.

What was waiting for him on the doorsteps wasn't really anything he could have expected. He had thought that he wouldn't hear about Haniel for at least two or three centuries, but it looked like he was wrong. In fact, she was there, at the doorway of his (ok, maybe not properly_ his_, but who cared anyway, it wasn't his fault if his vessel was rich) very expensive New York's flat, where he was hiding (while having some fun, of course. One had to enjoy life, hadn't he?).

And by the look of her, there must be something wrong. Her clothes were filthy and torn, her eyes were watery and red, and her Grace was literally _wriggling_ in pain and suffering. But what was most astonishing in her appearance was her belly: it was big and swollen, just like if... like if...

"Hannah, wh-" he began when he finally came out of his stunned silence.

She didn't let him finish. In less than a second she was in his arms, crying against his chest.

"I-I need your help…." she said with a trembling voice. Balthazar lifted helplessly his arms, patting awkwardly her back with one hand.

This wasn't good. This wasn't good at all.

His eyebrows almost went under the hairline as he stared at Hannah in complete surprise.

"My_ help?!"_

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

_All the angels named in the chapter appeared at least once in the show, with the exception of Azrael, who was just named once. The Rit Zein are a class of angels introduced in season 9 ._


	3. Chapter 3

_Here we are with chapter 3! We still don't own the characters, and we probably never will. Today's chapter includes a highly pissed off angel, a lot of bottles and Cas versus Ben. Have fun and please review! We know we are basically writing this for ourselves, but it would be nice to have some feedback ;)_

**Chapter 3**

"My _help_?" Balthazar repeated in disbelief. He was stunned. Since when he was the protector of the poor and oppressed and all that crap?

"Yes. Look, I-" she had stopped crying, but now she was trembling.

"You shouldn't have come here!" he said with a hiss. "You helped me, I gave you the item you two needed, end of the story. We loved, we fought, we never see each other again. If you have lost the Staff, that's not my problem. Take your boyfriend and run away until you can, if you don't want to come back to Raphael!"

But she was still there, trembling, and looking at him like she had nothing else in the world. He looked again at her belly. Angels could not get fat, so….

_It can't be… _he thought. Then, something else clicked in his mind.

"Where is Ezekiel?" he asked. And she started crying _again_.

Balthazar decided that having a pregnant, crying woman in his doorway wasn't a good idea (in particular when he saw one of his neighbors look at them) and took her in. The flat was a mess, because the lady who used to clean it for him hadn't come yet since the last party he had. He made her sit on the looked-like-it-was-clean part of his sofa and conjured a box of handkerchiefs.

"Look, I'm not saying that I'll help you, but….tell me what happened."

"I… He… You see, he isn't…" she was sighing too much for giving a clear answer, and Balthazar had to wait until she had calmed herself down.

_Cry me a river, baby. What was so difficult to understand in the sentence 'don't look for me ever again'?, _he wondered.

Hannah sniffed one last time and seemed able to collect her thoughts. "Some angels attacked us and-"

"Err, desolate to cook your goose, dearie, but that's simply _impossible._ With Enoch's Staff they shouldn't have been able to find you, not even if you jumped on a roof dancing lap-dance and waving a red flag to the sky." Balthazar interrupted her without even thinking about it.

"I…" she had started to cry again. Balthazar cursed himself.

_Why the hell can't I just shut myself up?_

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Dean thought he had forgotten how to breathe. He felt like his heart had stopped. His sight went burl for what it seemed like ages when he stood up, and the glass in his hand fell on the floor, breaking into a thousand pieces.

"_Sam?_"

He felt very lightheaded and had gone very pale, like if all his blood had been drained from his face. He clenched his fists, trying to control himself and stop trembling. His eyes were now completely focused on Cas, looking for any sign of indecision or doubt. When he found no one he opened his mouth to say something, but nothing come out for a long time. Castiel looked at him, patiently waiting for him to speak. No one of them noticed that Lisa was looking at the exchange of looks, with the smug face of someone who had just managed to solve a very difficult puzzle. Dean opened and closed his mouth for some times, shifting his weight from one foot to the other several times before finally speaking.

"Are-are you sure?" he breathed. But before Cas could answer, Dean had already found his voice once again. "Is he here? How can this be? He isn't a ghost, right? Because he managed to get there and I didn't find him and _thank God_ I didn't, I could have eliminate him for now, but why didn't I perceive him with the EMF and-" he stopped himself, aware that he was blabbing.

"Yes, Dean, I'm sure." answered Castiel in the gentler tone he had. "And he is right behind you."

Dean felt his legs going weak and sat again on Lisa's couch, breathing hard. Castiel looked over his head and nodded slightly.

"Yes, I have to admit he is taking it with far more balance than I thought." he said, and then he nodded again, clearly listening to something Dean couldn't hear. Dean was so shocked by the situation that was almost unaware of Lisa, who had sat near him and was trying to calm him down with a soothing touch on his shoulder. Clearly she was stunned too, but she held herself far better than Dean.

"Michael did this? Are you sure?... Well, this explains very well your peculiar situation." Castiel went on, moving behind the couch and still staring at nothing... no, now he looked like he was actually speaking to the friggin' wall. Dean heard Lisa chuckling, and he understood why. From her and Dean's point of view, the angel was talking to the air, and it was like looking at someone speaking in a hidden earphone... or going nuts. With Cas' usual behavior, the latter seemed more plausible.

"And where is Adam now?" asked Cas staring in the nothingness with piercing eyes. He basically looked like he was trying to destroy the wall with the power of his mind. Of course, speaking about Cas, he wouldn't need to look at the wall, he could have vaporized it with mere willpower.

Dean took a long breath and felt his pulse slowing down almost to normal. Sam wasn't gone. Sammy was still there, and Dean could take him back. He could get back his little brother. That was the only important thing right now.

SNSNSNSNSNSN

While Dean was still trying to wrap his mind around the news, Sam was basically jumping for joy. He resembled far too closely a child at Christmas Eve, but he was too happy for caring.

"Cas, man, I've never been so happy to see you, I swear!" he beamed. Castiel looked at him, squinting, probably a little puzzled by Dean's distraught expression and Sam's merry one.

"Are you sure you and your brother are all in this dimension?" the angel asked in a levelled voice. Sam scratched the back of his head, thinking about it. How in the world was he supposed to know?

"Err… yeah. Yeah, I'm pretty sure about it. You can call me a Sam Wheat without his Molly." he answered eventually.

Castiel cocked his head and stared curiously at him "I don't understand. Your surname is Winchester, not Wheat."

"No, it's a reference to this movie-never mind. I'msure we're all here." Sam said again, with more conviction. Cas nodded and gave to Sam a look whose attention was almost diagnostic.

"It appears that Michael's Grace linked your spirit and soul, accomplishing a state that makes you untouchable by Reapers, but is still immaterial enough to prevent you from interacting on the physical plane, if not for some feeble manifestation that resembles the behavior of a vengeful ghost." he deadpanned without even breathing between the words. Sam blinked and gaped at Cas with his mouth slightly open. He wasn't sure he had understood very well what the angel was implying, and if he had to judge from Dean and Lisa's puzzled faces, neither they had.

"Riiiight. So, I am not a ghost." he said tentatively. Castiel lifted one eyebrow in sincere surprise.

"That's what I said, Sam. You are not a ghost in any meaning of the word. You are a soul." he said more slowly.

"Dude. You lost me like, three minutes ago." stepped in Dean, looking at the angel from the couch with a puzzled expression. "Aren't ghosts and souls the same thing?"

If Castiel had been human, he probably would have rolled his eyes by now, but since he wasn't, he just turned to face Dean with proverbial heavenly patience.

"No, Dean. To make this simpler, ghosts are made by guilt, feelings of various kind and human regrets, while souls are made of pure energy. A degenerate soul who couldn't leave the mortal plane becomes a ghost, but they are not the same thing." he explained. Dean gaped incredulously at him and half stood up from the couch as he waved his hand to bolster his words.

"Then why the hell didn't the EMF work? It's supposed to work with energies!" he blurted.

"I said _pure_, Dean" the angel was speaking very slowly, like if he was talking with a child or a half-wit. "A human's machine cannot perceive something like that."

Sam couldn't help but snicker. Clearly, Dean found it rather annoying, while Lisa's expression showed she was both amused and surprised. Probably she had never met someone that could annoy Dean so fast and so much before. Sam himself wasn't always half that good at pissing Dean off.

"So how can we get our bodies back?" he asked. Castiel looked down and seemed slightly embarrassed.

"I'm... not sure." he answered. Dean's eyes darted on the angel like a predatory bird on a rabbit.

"You are not sure about what?" he asked with a voice dripping suspect. Castiel lifted his face to look at Dean and linked his eyes to the man's green ones.

"I'm not sure of how reverse Sam and Adam's condition. I suggest to go to Robert Singer's house and retrieve your brother. Immediately."

SNSNSNSNSNSN

Castiel couldn't understand what was so difficult to understand. Going to Singer's house and verify if Adam's condition was the most logic thing to do. Even so, Dean appeared uncertain and clearly not very willing of leaving the house.

"Well…" said Dean looking dubiously at the dark haired woman - Lisa. Castiel wasn't sure he liked her. "Immediately? I really don't know if-"

"Come with me." chimed in Lisa, taking Dean's hand and dragging him in the kitchen, probably with the intent of speaking alone with him, something that Castiel found rather annoying... It was useless. They were losing time, and time wasn't a thing Castiel could waste. He had two short days before returning in Heaven, and even now his senses were almost completely focused on his garrison' voices, in fear of what could happen without him there... like an ambush from Raphael, for example. It was true that two days on Earth were nothing in Heaven, where time could be far slower or faster than human time, but Castiel couldn't help but worry.

"So…" The dark haired boy named Ben had stuck his head inside the room, and was now coming in and peering at Castiel with obvious curiosity.

"I'd bet he obviously doesn't want to lose his chance to speak with you and was ready to catapult himself in the room as soon as his mother and Dean went out." snickered Sam floating on the now empty couch. Cas cocked his head and stared curiously at the boy, but didn't say anything. He didn't understand the soft spot humans had on children, even if he had noticed it in more than occasion, even in apparently hardened men like the Winchesters.

"Are you really an angel? Cool!" said Ben, looking at him with round eyes.

"Yes, but I've not a cold corporal temperature, since my Grace is made from God's light and I emanate celestial warmth." answered drily Castiel. He wasn't sure he had gotten the meaning of the boy's speech, but it seemed the right reply from a logical point of view. Why Sam was laughing was behind his comprehension of human kind.

"You are weird." decided Ben with a shrug. "Do you have wings? Can I see them? Do all angels wear a tie?"

"Yes, no and no." deadpanned Castiel, completely lost. Humans were so difficult, every time he thought he had grasped their essence, it slipped from his fingers like water or sand would do. He turned around and give Sam a very annoyed glare.

"Why are you laughing? I really don't think you should laugh. Your situation is critical, even if you should be grateful because you are still there, since your role in the Apocalypse as the Antichrist." he scolded. Ben blinked and his eyes went so round they almost looked too big for his face.

"_Moooom!_" he screamed. "The creepy angel with the trench coat said that Dean's brother is the devil!" So apparently the boy had been overhearing their conversation, if he knew Sam was there, even if invisible to the eyes. Castiel felt even more annoyed. He really didn't get humans, and human children even less.

From the kitchen came out two different reproaches at the same time.

"Ben, leave the angel alone and do your homework!" Ben snorted, but turn around and ran upstairs.

"Cas, we spoke about this! Do _not_ call Sammy Antichrist!"

Castiel blinked a couple of times. Strangely enough, his irritation was growing minute by minute.

_First Dean calls me for hours and then he closes himself in the kitchen with a woman? I thought it was urgent! _

He really, really didn't understand humans, and Dean Winchester, the one man whose soul Castiel had sewn back into life so much time ago, was the most puzzling between them.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

At the very moment Lisa closed the door behind their shoulders, Dean forced himself to speak. He clearly had no intention to hide his head under the sand, not this time. He wasn't a cheat, he never had been, and when Lisa welcomed him in her house, the implicit agreement was that he was going to stay.

"I'll stay." He blurted, almost stuttering the sentence. "One word, Lisa, tell me one word, and I'll stay."

Lisa smiled sadly and took her hand to his cheek in a gentle caress.

"I know." she whispered softly. "And this is the exact reason I'm not going to ask that from you. You have to go."

Dean inhaled sharply and his eyes went big and round and more green than hazel under the kitchen's light.

"Are... Are you sending me away?" he asked in a broken voice, and Lisa could tell other people in his life had turned their backs on him without not so much as a second glance. Such idiots.

"Yes, Dean." she said gently. "I'm sending you to help your brother, because I know you could never be happy in any other way. I know you don't love me - no, let me finish." she admonished him when he opened his mouth to speak. "I know you care about me, and I know you adore Ben, and that you'd give your life for ours. But I know as well that you are not in love with me, and that you want to go. Just... Just remember you'll always have a place here, always, when you'll need it." she ended in a trembling voice. Dean took her face between his hands, tracing her cheekbones with callous fingers and pressing his forehead against her.

"You." he articulate. "You are the most awesome woman in the whole world. I..."

"_Moooom!_" came the yell from the other room. "The creepy angel with the trench coat said that Dean's brother is the devil!"

Lisa and Dean shared an incredulous look, then they started to laugh.

_Look as if Ben is making a new friend,_ smiled Lisa to herself as she scolded her son and Dean shouted something about the Antichrist. She looked at him, trying to imprint his face in her head - light hair, green-hazel eyes, freckles and that lopsided, almost childish grin - and she turned to the window, wiping away a tear before he could see it.

"Lisa." he called when he stopped laughing. His face was serious and worried now, but there was a flame in his eyes that hadn't been there a minute before. "I'm sorry."

She turned to face him, and if she hadn't already been sure she was doing the right thing, she would have been now, seeing Dean's eyes blazing, more alive than they had been in months.

"Don't be. You would never be complete without Sam. And..."she couldn't help to throw that last dart. "Take care of that angel of yours. He's lucky to have you."

Dean snorted, clearly not getting it quite yet.

"Damn straight. That dummy is bound to embarrass everyone he meets without me holding him back. He's such a dorky weird little guy." he said with a sardonic smile heading to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob and gave Lisa a bright grin.

"Thank you. For everything." he murmured with sincere fondness in his eyes. Lisa laughed lightly.

"Go on. They must be waiting for you. Just promise me you'll call." she asked him.

"I will." promised Dean with a nod, and he went out of the kitchen and Lisa's life without a second thought.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

"Ok." said Dean while he came back in the living room "Let's go. We need to move."

In his hurry to help Sam, he didn't consider how much Cas liked to take everything literally. He remembered it a second later, when the angel took him by word and pointed two fingers at his forehead, bringing him to Bobby's within a blink.

Dean landed on Bobby's floor without too much grace, and as soon as his eyes went to the place, he realized that Adam had to be there, just like Sammy had said, trying to get Bobby's attention. Even if he was doing it in a very peculiar way, since he had managed to blow up _every single bottle of alcohol in the room_, and Bobby was reciting an exorcism bunkered behind his sofa.

"What the hell are you doing here, boy?!" he shouted at Dean waving his rifle. Dean shook his head, still queasy for the flight.

"Hello, Adam." said Cas.

"Adam?" repeated Bobby in disbelief. He looked at Dean with two interrogative marks as eyes. "Did ya manage to make him get drunk?"

Dean didn't answer to Bobby. Instead, he turned to his side and spoke to Cas, feeling a blind rage boiling in his chest. He hated the angel's way to move, it made him feel dizzy and nauseated, it did weird things to his guts and, bloody hell, Cas damn knew it!

_Hell, I didn't even have the time to say bye to Ben… __**And my baby is still there**__!_

"When I told you it was time to move I didn't mean like this!" he growled pointing an accusatory finger at the angel's chest. Cas cocked his head and looked curiously at him.

"I thought we were in a hurry." he said with something that could remember a shrug.

"Yeah, but not so much to need your damned angel mojo!" he shouted.

"Sam doesn't agree." was all the angel said after some glares behind Dean's left ear. "And Adam neither."

"Yeah, and what if you wasn't able to take Sammy along, you-"

Dean didn't have time to finish his sentence - and that was a good thing, considering how much he was pissed at Cas - because Bobby was clearly tired to be ignored and interrupted them.

"Hey, ya idjits! What the hell are ya talkin' about?"

They both turned in his direction, but it was Castiel the one who spoke. "I needed to see if Adam's condition was equal to Sam's."

Bobby looked at him like if he was completely mad.

"Excuse me?!" he growled.

Dean snorted and walked in his direction, firmly ignoring Castiel, who was staring again at the wall, probably speaking with Adam.

"Yes, Sam already explained that much to me." the angel said waving one hand. Bobby looked in Cas' direction, even more confused than before, then turned to Dean, tapping the floor with one foot as he waited for an explanation.

"He isn't crazy, Sam and Adam are really here." confirmed Dean, grasping one of the few still intact bottles of beer and taking a sip.

"How do ya know?" asked the older hunter arching one eyebrow.

Dean frowned, as he found himself without an answer. After all, he didn't have any prove about it. He had simply trusted Cas' word without even thinking about it.

"Because otherwise I'm starting to imagine things." he finally answered swallowing the beer. Yeah, the reason was that. It made sense. "Since I'm not…"

Bobby squared him, probably searching for signs of madness, then he nodded. He believed him.

"Ok, so are you telling me the bloody thing that blew up my liquors was one of your brothers?" he inquired.

"Yes, I am. You got Adam, while Sam was trying to make me gone mad." smirked Dean pointing at Castiel, who was still murmuring something to Adam. Or Sam. Either one of the invisible people in the room. Dean sighed. Why was his life so bloody complicated?

"Adam? Good to know. I swear I'm going to kill him…" threatened darkly Bobby, finally putting down his rifle, or rather throwing it on the table.

"We need to find a way to taking their bodies back, first. Then we can kick their ass for sending us nuts." sneered Dean with a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. Bobby smirked back and patted Dean's back in a fatherly gesture.

"I like this plan. I really do."

SNSNSNSNSNSN

Balthazar waited patiently for Hannah to stop weeping, and only when she finally seemed to be a little calmer he dared to speak again.

"Sorry. Go on. I won't interrupt you anymore"

After she had taken some heavy breaths and used a lot of handkerchiefs and a lot of minutes had passed, she finally started to speak again.

"One angel, Nathaniel, attacked us, and he knew about Ezekiel and me and, you know, the baby..." she said with a blush.

Balthazar bit his tongue for not interrupting.

_So she IS pregnant! I can't believe it…_

"I wanted to stay, but I was scared to fight in my condition, and Ezekiel is-was..." after the correction she needed some time of crying and sighing before she could go on. Balthazar huffed and retrieved other handkerchiefs, finding in his heart a renovated hate for women in general and pregnant women in particular.

"He... was a so good fighter that I thought I could trust him when he said he would meet me in our place, but he never came…."

Balthazar wait for some more minutes, but she didn't say anything else. So he decided she had ended and he could start with the questions.

"How did Nate find you? He's not exactly the brighter star of Heaven. His brain has always been stuffed with feathers." he commented drily.

"I don't know…." Hannah started trembling again.

_Father, give me the patience..., _he muttered internally. That was why he always avoided sentimental women.

"Easy now. Breathe. No panic. Who send him? Raphael?" he tried to pry again. Hannah shook her head.

"I don't know, maybe…. He said that he wanted the baby…"

"Did he say why?"

"No."

_Oh, this is simply wonderful... she is not only a problem, she is also as useless as candies for demons. How much I love my life._

"I think they want to kill my baby. There can't be another explanation." she whispered out of the blue after some minutes of silence, if not considering her weeping. "He is the first angel not made by God. He could be different from us. Powerless, weaker…" her hands went around her belly in a protective gesture. "But more probably the one who sent Nathaniel thinks that he'll be more powerful than us… my poor little one."

Balthazar slowly rubbed his temples and pinched his nose between his thumb and his index.

"Here we are in the party. And I've always been a terrible dancer." he muttered darkly. Wow, he really ought to stop being that sarcastic...

... Nah. Not a chance.

SNSNSNSNSN

_Bye Lisa. Sorry, but you're out :)_

_Ice cream for everyone who get Sam's reference without looking for it on Google! ;)_


	4. Chapter 4

_Hello everyone! In this chapter, we have a little angst for Adam, Dean behaving... like Dean, and Bal being the egotistical prick he can be sometimes. We know not everyone likes Adam (who kinda is a little bitch) but we thought it was really unfair to just leave him there alone on the Cage. He is a Winchester too, after all!_

_Love you all :)_

**Chapter 4**

Bobby wasn't that much for standing in the living room like a bunch of idiots, so he dragged Dean in his study, followed by Castiel and, of course, Sam and Adam. The old man sat in his chair, took away his cap and poured himself a glass of strong whiskey. Luckily for him, he had it in a metal flask, so Adam hadn't managed to break it.

"Let me understand, then. There are Sam and Adam floating 'round my home like two not-quite-ghosts." he said, looking at Dean and Castiel with an expression Sam could only define as 'pissed off'. Sam braced himself for the scolding that was surely going to arrive. As sure as the sunrise, the older man needed only two minutes and five seconds (Sam counted them on the old clockwork on the wall) to explode.

"Why the HELL are ya boys ALWAYS in the eye of the hurricane?! You idjits!" he yelled, hitting the desk with his fist.

"Well, it's not like we do it on purpose. Troubles just... I dunno', follow us everywhere we go!" rebutted Dean, waving his hand in an exasperated gesture.

"I have noticed troubles seem indeed to have a preference for the Winchesters." offered helpfully Castiel.

"_I_ am followed by troubles. Dean searches for them." snorted Sam. Of course, Castiel had to repeat his sentence word by word. And of course Dean was pissed off, but he didn't know where Sam was, so he was forced to throw his spiteful glare to the angel, who looked at him with blank eyes.

"Very mature." drawled Adam, and Sam barely repressed a laugh as Dean turned and stole the whisky from Bobby, who let him do it with just a bad glance and a mutter.

"Very funny, Sammy." he snorted. "Anyway, your and Adam's situation is apparently the same. Perfect."

Dean took a long sip from the flask and looked again at Cas. "How do we get their bodies back from the Cage?" he asked.

"I do not know." Castiel was absolutely calm, like he had just said it was raining. Sam's heart lost a beat.

_What?, _he thought. He had been so sure Castiel was going to help them, that the only idea of staying like that was like being hit by a truck. And since Sam _had_ been hit by a truck, he surely wasn't exaggerating. Near him, Adam literally fell on the chair and took his head in his hands. Sam tried to think about some words to say that could comfort the boy, but nothing came out.

There were some seconds of silence, then Dean managed to build himself up enough to speak.

"What do you mean, you_ don't know_?!" he shouted marching on the angel like a hungry wolf on a sheep. The older Winchester had clearly reached the thresholds of hysteria in less than a second. He obviously couldn't accept to have his brothers like this, and Castiel's omnipresent composure wasn't helping.

"Dean, yelling is not going to help." sighed Sam, putting one hand on Adam's shoulder, but his voice was to not avail.

"I mean that I don't know how take your brothers' bodies back from the Cage." Cas repeated in a deadpan. "I may be able to recreate their physical bodies, but I do not dare to tie them in a new body, without knowing what I am dealing with."

Bobby was looking at that exchange with his eyes out of his head. Sam was able to see his growing desperation and understood it, since it was so similar to his own. How could they manage to bring them back if not even an Angel of the Lord knew what to do?

"First of all, Adam is my _half_-brother-" growled Dean, poking the angel in the chest with a vicious pettiness.

"Geez. Thank you." mumbled Adam, hurt by the sentence.

"-second, you _have_ to know!" Dean ended, grasping Castiel's shoulder so tightly he would probably have broken a human bone.

"Ignore him." said Sam to Adam with an exasperated sigh. "He always says things that he doesn't mean when he is worried."

_And he yells at everyone around him even if they are innocent, _he added in his head.

"You had hurt your brother, Dean." said Castiel in a deadpan. Sam cursed him. It was great to have someone who could hear and see you, but this didn't mean that Sam wanted the angel to repeat _all his sentences_.

"WHO CARES?!" the predictable roar came out. Dean was _definitely_ hysterical. Castiel really was supposed to know how to deal with a semi-hysterical Dean by now, and not to make it worse, but it looked like the angel hadn't got that memo.

"Now calm down, boy." ordered Bobby in a rough voice. "I'll do some research and-"

"And what?! Don't give me any crap, Bobby, we all know that if Cas have no idea of what's going on we are all fucked!"

"Dean." called Castiel. The hunter spun and faced the angel with a snarl.

"What now?" he barked. Castiel dealt with the man's rage without even blinking.

"I don't know what to do, but maybe we can find some ideas in Robert's books. There must be something I have overlooked." he said in a calm voice. Dean gaped at him, breathing fast. He clenched his fists and turned to Bobby with a jerk.

"Let's find a way. I want Sammy back. And Adam too." he snarled. Sam thought it would almost have been endearing, if the creepy glint of 'overprotective-big-brother" in Dean's eyes hadn't been so... creepy.

Man, he needed to sleep.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

Bobby Singer was basically a book hoarder. In his house there were more books than in a lot of public libraries, in piles and stacks and heaps, everywhere. They were in English, Greek, Chinese, Latin and one was in _Sanskrit_ and had to be read aloud by Castiel word by word. There were books in their usual place, the bookshelves, but there were books on the floor, books under the furniture, books on the table, and Dean had found a book in the _fridge._

Adam was pretty sure there was a law against that. There_ had _to be. No way a man could have so many books in so many different languages.

And even so, after three hours of reading about ghosts, spirits, souls and necromancy, they had nothing. And Castiel's habit of pointing out every single mistake of the books, with long explanations of how and why they were wrong, well, _that _was driving Adam mad. Well, it was actually driving Dean mad as well, but Dean kept yelling at the angel without inhibitions, while Adam had problems even _looking_ at him. Zachariah had been an evil manipulator, while Michael, even if he hadn't been cruel or evil, had been cold and duty-centered, and anyway being a vessel had been a painful and unpleasant experience for Adam. Of course Castiel wasn't Zachariah nor Michael. But even so, Adam couldn't help to feel uneasy near the angel, and Castiel's unnerving intense eyes gave him the creeps.

"Maybe we should give up." he said. His voice was even, and he had said it aloud only because he didn't think to be heard in the mess made by the others. Dean was shouting something to Castiel, who was answering point by point with a mixture of indisputable logic and complete lack of common sense. Bobby wasn't shouting at the angel, but he was speaking on the phone with one of his contacts, Rufus, even if he was basically bitching with him about the Winchesters.

_And they call this research? They are only bitching at each other while holding old books!,_ thought sullenly Adam.

"What?" asked Sam, looking up at him with a stunned expression. Adam pressed his lips in a strict line. Clearly Sam had heard him. _Crap._

The young boy sighed as he tried to explain himself.

"I mean, you can stay here like this, with your brother, and the angel will help you to communicate with him, but I…" he didn't finish the sentence. He was too confused. He had no place to return to, no one to go to. He had had shallow friendships and scarce relationships in his life. There had been only his mother in his life, and now there was no possibility to see her ever again. But there was no way to explain this to Sam right now.

"You are our brother too." said softly Sam, not really understanding what Adam felt. "You should stay here with us."

Adam snorted. After he had been brought back to life without his mother with him, he had been alone, not matter what Sam said. He remembered the ghouls biting her, her yells of pain as the creatures pierced his own flesh with their teeth. Since that moment, there had been nothing for him on Earth, only pain and loneliness.

"You don't really consider me as your brother. Don't try to deny it, I know." he said sourly, preventing Sam from speaking more. "You feel only pity for me, because I'm alone, but your brother surely hates me-"

"No, he doesn't not!" insisted Sam standing up, as he thought he could imprint more strength to his words with his considerable height.

"... and I understand him. I'm an illegitimate son, after all." Adam ended the sentence like Sam had never spoken.

"He does not hate you." repeated Sam, drawing stubbornly his brows together. "What he said before doesn't matter. He doesn't want you to stay like this."

"But he wanted me to stay dead!" said Adam with a broken voice, taking again his head in his hands. Hearing Sam's silence, he looked up and saw his confused expression. He straightened up with a sigh.

"Zachariah told it to me when he resurrected me." he clarified, spitting the angel's name with deep distaste.

"Oh."

Sam came near him and kneeled in front of him. He put his hand on Adam shoulder and forced the younger boy to look at him.

"Listen to me, Adam. Zachariah said it because he wanted to hurt you, and because he didn't want you to trust us. And you already know it, don't you?"

Adam nodded. He had understood it when Zachariah had told him that he was only a bait for Dean, but still some of what he had said must be true… not the part about Dean and Sam being lovers, of course, one would have to be blind to not see that, but there had to be something true in what the angel had bragged about.

After Adam's nod, Sam went on with renovate conviction. "It's true, Dean didn't want you to come back from the death-"

Adam frowned. _So that was true, then…_

"-but he wanted it only because he didn't want this life for you. He doesn't want it because neither our dad wanted it for you. If he could, he would put me aside and hunt alone."

Adam was stunned. He really wasn't expecting it.

"But… why?" he asked.

Sam stood up and smile down at him.

"Because he knows this life sucks and want the people he cares about to have a happy apple-pie life." he answered.

"But he doesn't even know me…" mumbled Adam in confusion.

"It doesn't matter. Dad cared about you enough to come and see you, so you are part of our family. He really wants you to be happy."

With that Sam turn back his attention to the others and their 'research', leaving Adam alone with his confusion.

_He wants me to be happy?_

He was dragged out from his mumbling by a louder shout from Dean.

"Gimme that, _now_!" roared the hunter launching toward a big tome covered in dust.

"No." rebutted firmly Castiel as he literally snatched the old book from Dean's hands and closed it with a snap. Adam saw Sam rolling his eyes as he went to the taller man's side.

"What a paranoid celestial being." he snorted with new composure.

"I'm not going to kill you and then take you back from death so you can speak with a Reaper." went on Castiel with a dry voice, frowning with his whole being.

"Oh, c'mon Cas, it's a good idea!" yelled Dean, trying to take the book back.

"We have no guarantees you are going to survive the experience."

"Well, yeah, if you want a guarantee, buy a toaster."

"No, the angel's right, son, it's not a good idea at all..." said Bobby as his eyes darted to the angel with an incredulous expression, like if he couldn't believe he was agreeing with Castiel.

"Whose side are you, Bobby?!"

Dean's efforts weren't taking him anywhere, since Cas' angelic mojo didn't even allow him to go near the book, let alone touch or take it. Adam started laughing, while Sam did his best for containing himself. He failed and in less than a second he was laughing too. It was like Dean was trying to move immersed in syrup instead than air.

Meanwhile, Bobby kept speaking like Dean had never said a word.

"... but it's the only possible way for them to gain a body. So, it's not like we've a choice. And stop acting like a pair of freaking' three years old!" he ended with a louder voice. He kinda reminded Adam of a coach he had in high school. They used to call him Bulldozer, but in Adam's opinion, Bobby Singer could give Bulldozer some good points. And maybe put him in line.

Dean stopped his struggles in trying to take the book and shoot Castiel a killing glare.

"They could stay like this." proposed the angel passing slowly his long fingers along the book's spine.

Dean looked at him like he had just lost his mind.

"Don't be ridiculous. No way I'm going to have you always around only to speak with my brothers!"

"Just do it and stop bitching. You're giving me a headache." growled Bobby.

Sam didn't miss the plural form used by Dean and his eyes darted immediately to Adam.

"See? He considers you his brother exactly like me." he beamed. Adam didn't answer, but one of his rare smiles blossomed on his face. It was nice to have brothers.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

Dean tried to relax his muscles as he lay on his back on the bed.

"I still believe this is not a good idea, Dean." murmured Castiel with a sigh.

"Well, I think it is. So just bite me." Dean snapped back. He was still pissed off at Cas. Highly pissed off. He was angry at him because he had disappeared for two months, he was angry because his first impulse just before the rage took control had been to go and hug the angel, he was angry because Cas didn't know how to help Sam, because he had left the Impala at Lisa's, because he had teleported Dean like he was a freaking bag and ultimately he was angry at Cas because he didn't stop criticizing.

"It's highly unlikely that a Reaper could know how to restore a body of a person who isn't technically dead. If I provoke your temporary death, I don't know what dangers you are going to meet on your path." insisted the angel with a hint of worry in his deep voice.

"Listen, kid, we went through this at least three bloody times in the last hour, so let's do this and stop sulking like a sniffing baby." Bobby scolded him with his arms crossed on his chest and his back against the wall of the bedroom. Castiel gave him a hard look and shook his head.

"I will do it only because I want to help Sam as well." he muttered with a grim face.

"C'mon, man, don't pull that face on me. In my time of dying, want nobody to mourn." joked Dean with a sing song voice, earning him a hard glance from Bobby and a blank one from Cas. He sighed as he rested his head on the pillow. No one ever appreciated good music.

Castiel leaned down on the bed and touched lightly Dean's temples with his fingertips. The angel's skin was warm like if he had been under the summer sun for hours, and his touch was weirdly soothing. Dean felt his eyelids becoming heavier and heavier as Castiel's hands moved to his forehead.

"Are you ready? I'm going to remove what links your soul to your body, and it could be painful." said seriously the angel. Dean inhaled deeply as he felt his limbs almost floating on the mattress. The very concept of 'pain' sounded really blurred right now, he was too comfortable. And somehow the idea of Cas hurting him was laughable, no matter how much Dean was angry at him. He was _Cas._

"Uhm uhm." he mumbled, his tongue tripping over the words. "Am I going to see Sam now?"

Castiel's fingers traced slowly a path on his skin as he answered. "I fear you are not, Dean. I am going to turn temporary you into a ghost, while your brothers' predicament is peculiar to say the least."

"Oh." said Dean, a little disappointed. He would have liked to say something else, but his mouth refused to obey.

"How much other time do you need?" he heard Bobby asking, and he felt Castiel shifting slightly on the edge of the mattress.

"Only a little more. I'm trying to do it very slowly, so I can avoid him any pain." answered Castiel in a low, calm voice. His hands left Dean's temples as he pressed firmly a palm above the man's heart. Dean felt a warm wave spreading from that point in his whole body, and he felt more relaxed than he had ever been. His heartbeat slowed progressively, until it stopped with a last, feeble thump. His hazed senses registered a few other words from Bobby just before he fell into a soothing darkness.

When he woke up a second later he was dead. He was almost happy for how it had happened: he had felt nothing, only a great peace. He came out of his body and looked around, stretching tentatively his arms. As Cas had predicted, there was no sight of Sam nor Adam, but the angel was staring intensely at him, still with that contrary expression on his face.

"You have exactly one hour, then I'll tie again your soul back into your body." he said with a disapproving grimace plastered on his face.

Dean just ignored him and passed over Bobby and out of the room with soundless steps.

_That angel acts like we had another choice, _he thought bitterly. He went downstairs and passed through the door with nothing more than a tickling sensation all over his body.

The sky outside was colored with a pale shade of violet from the twilight. The carcasses of the cars around him gave a spectral appearance to the place. He tilted his head backward as he stood in the middle of the courtyard.

"Hey, I'm speaking with you! I'm right here, come to take me!" he shouted with his most boastering attitude. For a moment, nothing moved. Then a cold breeze moved the branches of the trees, going through him without touching his skin. He turned around and tilted his head in greeting.

"Hi, Tessa." he said with a lopsided grin. The young, pretty woman in front of him gave him a look between exasperation and amusement.

"Dean. You are dead again, aren't you?" she sighed, shaking her dark curtain of hair. "I'm starting to think you just miss me."

"That could be." agreed Dean with a flirting grin. Tessa sighed again and gave him a hard look.

"What's going on this time?"

SNSNSNSNSNSNSNSN

"I'm really honored that you thought about me first, sweetheart, really." Balthazar began with what he hoped was not a too harsh voice. "But I won't help you and your baby-first-not-made-by-God..." he slowed down until he stopped. Hannah looked at him, with confused watering eyes.

_What's wrong with this sentence?_

Then the truth about the baby-problem hit him like a fist._ Oh, that's simply __**great**_._ It's like having a nuclear bomb in precarious balance at the top of the Grand Canyon._

"What, didn't you and your boyfriend never heard about condoms?" he blurted out in disgust. Oh Father, he was going to feel sick.

"Don't be rude." was the only answer he got. In a hard voice that had nothing to do with the previous, watery one. And with a very hard slap in tow.

"Hey! Take your hands in place, won't you?" he roared, rubbing his soaring cheek. She gave him a burning glare that somehow managed to shut him up.

_The more she stays, the more probabilities there are to be discovered. I have to take ride of this little slag. Now!_

He thought about it, but nothing came in his mind for a long time. Then Ezekiel's name appeared in his brain like a neon light. If he was still alive, Balthazar could simply bring her to him and disappear again.

_Perfect_._ He takes his problems away and I'll have my peace, _he thought. Yes, that could work. Problem: she said he didn't come in their meet place. He decided to try it anyway.

"You sure you waited for your husband long enough?"

She sent him a killing glare. Again. How it came there were still men alive on Earth if all pregnant women were like that?

"I stayed there until dawn. Believe me, he should've come before that time..." she said in a low voice, crossing her arms on his chest as if she was trying to warm herself. Her voice died in the end, and she didn't finish the sentence, but the meaning was even too much clearer.

_Crap. Not even a little help, eh Daddy?, _huffed internally Balthazar, not really expecting an answer. He stood up and grasped the phone with a sigh. At least he could order dinner.

After he had had some Italian food, and a few glasses of red wine, he felt himself a little more ready to think about something productive. Hannah, who hadn't eaten anything but a lot of bread, followed him with her eyes, waiting for him to speak, but after almost fifteen minutes of silence and pacing, she couldn't wait anymore.

"So… now… what? What can we do?" she asked, speaking again with that trembling voice Balthazar was growing to despite.

"_We_?" He sputtered the word alongside with the wine he was sipping, completely stunned. "_We_ won't do _anything_, precious thing."

"B-but you said you would help me…."

He couldn't help it and laughed at her. He didn't mean to be cruel, really, but this girl expected from him things he couldn't give her. "I never said that. I said that you could tell me what happened, that's all. I'm sorry, sweetie, but I love my skin more than you."

He stopped and looked at her, and he really didn't like was he saw. He sighed. He really couldn't help her, not if he wanted to stay hidden. And with the baby who was arriving, it wouldn't be an option anymore. With that little thing around he wouldn't have no other choice that come back in the civil war, because he would have been discovered in a matter of days.

"Listen, I cannot help you, and that's it. I want to live, you know?"

Hannah still didn't say a word, but looked even more lost and hurt. He felt miserable for doing so, but he really didn't have a choice.

_I cannot take this risk. I'm not like Cas. That masochist would help her without even thinking, _he thought. And this gave him an idea.

"But I know someone who can and will help you."

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

Raphael turned slowly her blade in her hands as she stared at the angel in front of her.

"So you have no idea of where Haniel could have gone?" she asked in a cold voice. The angel Ezra shook his head.

"No, sir. I don't. I have no idea." he answered humbly. Raphael leaned forward as she stared intensely at him with her dark, blank eyes.

"Really. Are you sure?" she demanded again in a deadpan.

"Yes, I-" he didn't finish the sentence. Raphael's blade pierced his heart and turned her back as the angel behind her burned out in a dazzling white light. She removed a drop of blood from her silvery feathers with the tip of her finger, then she waved her hand to one of the angels in a dark suit that were standing in the corners of the room.

"What about the situation with the rebels?" she asked.

"They are still organizing, but Castiel appears to have caught one of our soldiers, the angel Barakiel." answered the angel with a reverent voice. Raphael turned slowly to face him, her face as cold and emotionless as a frozen lake.

"Castiel." she drawled with disgust. "I have already killed him once. I offered him a hand of peace, asked him to help me restoring the Apocalypse and taking Heaven on Earth... and he turned his back on me. He turned his back on the Host, on his brothers... for the _Winchesters._" She spattered the last word like it was an insult.

She passed her index across the blade, covering her skin with Ezra's blood. Her mouth quivered in a cold amusement.

"I'll see them burn." she whispered quietly, and the angels around her bowed their heads to Raphael, the last Archangel standing in Heaven.

"I'll burn them all."

SNSNSNSNSNSNSNSN

_Just to be clear: we know angels have no body, nor sex, but is kind of difficult to describe interactions between angels made of pure energy. So let's say what we write is what a limited, puny human would perceive if he could see and hear what the angels are saying._

_Barakiel is technically an OC, the first one we named, but he's absolutely marginal. _

_Reviews? Please? Because we love you guys so much? :3 :3_


	5. Chapter 5

_Hi guys! Here we are with chapter 5. Please review, we'd love to know what you think ;)_

**Chapter 5**

"How much time has passed?" asked Sam from the chair he had taken as his own, the nearest to the bed where Dean was lying on.

"Not even a minute since the last time you asked."

Cas' voice was calm, linear and monotonous, but everyone could understand he was annoyed. After all, he had said from the start that he didn't like the idea, even if Dean would stay death only for a little time. The angel was stiffer than even, his face completely bloodless and his hands clenched in fists. Sam was very pale as well, and he kept biting his lower lip or chewing his nails. He looked younger that way, with his round brown eyes and the longish hair that kept falling on his face. His long limbs made him look like a goofy teenager as he leaned down to spy some sign of life in Dean's corpse.

Adam looked at them, then at Dean.

_I shouldn't feel so much anxiety, right? I barely know him!_

But it didn't matter how many times he repeated it, he still felt his heart aching at the sight of Dean's pale and cold figures.

Eventually, he stepped out of the room and went downstairs, jumping the last two steps like he used to do when he was a toddler. Bobby had come out to buy some alcoholics to replace what Adam had destroyed, and now he was in his living room, drinking a beer with his eyes fixed on a football game on TV, even if it was clear he wasn't really watching it. He had turned off all his phone except one, and he kept playing nervously with the remote in his hand, until it fell on the ground, eliciting a muttered 'Balls!' from the old man.

_Man, he must really love them._

The thought made Adam feel even more lonely. Dean and Sam had each other and a sort of stepfather, he had nothing. He got out of the house, looking for air. It was already dark, outside, and it was probably cold, but neither Sam nor Adam could feel cold anymore in their ethereal state. Adam sat on the trunk of an old car, putting his chin on his folded knees with a sigh.

And in that exact moment two figures appeared from thin hair in front of him. A man with dark blonde hair and with dark clothes was holding a clearly pregnant woman with black hair and very blue eyes, who warily looked at Adam, biting her lip in confusion. Thanks to some miracle, Adam managed to not scream like a little girl. The man looked at him with a curious gaze. His eyes were pale gray, and his mouth was fixed in a permanent smirk.

"What a little lost soul we have here." he drawled with a heavy British accent. "We are looking for the angel Castiel. Is he here?"

Adam gasped in search of words, but the shock of being seen by two people that had just appeared from the nowhere didn't allow him to put together any meaningful sentence.

_Demons?,_ he asked to himself, terrified. But were the demons able to see him and Sam? Were they able to hurt them somehow? Adam started to move slowly backward, trying to reach Bobby's house and the protections Castiel has enveloped the building in.

"Well? Are you dead or something?" the man smirked tapping the dusty ground with a foot. From his grin it was clear that he thought he had made a great joke. And suddenly a light bulb lightened Adam's head.

Angels. They were freaking angels.

Now that he knew what he was facing, speaking became somehow easier.

"Yeah, he is inside." he said, jerking toward the house with his hand. "But he is busy with-"

They didn't let him finish the sentence, because they were already in the doorway when he had just uttered the word 'busy'.

He huffed and run after them, trying to ignore the blatant way the male angel had shut the door closed right on his nose. Prick. Adam's annoyance morphed swiftly in panic when he saw what was waiting for him in the living room.

_Oh, crap. Bobby is going to exorcise me for this._

"_CASTIEL!"_ he shouted, throwing himself upstairs after the two visitors.

SNSNSNSNSNSN

Castiel lifted his head as he heard Adam's shouts, and he stood up, drawing out his blade.

"What's going on?" asked Sam, jumping to his feet and immediately placing himself between the bed and the door, his shoulders stiffened and his back straightened to look even taller than he actually was. Castiel mirrored the younger Winchester's position, casting a fast look to Dean's body. He shuddered and looked away, unable to tolerate the sight even a second more. It wasn't fair for Dean to endure so much, it wasn't right.

The door was slammed open as a slim man walked in, pulling Adam away with a mere jerk of his hand.

"Shut up your cake hole, little soul. Your voice is worse than Celine Dion's last album." he drawled as Adam was slammed against the wall and took his hands to his throat, moving his mouth like he was yelling but unable to speak. Sam ran toward him and passed his arm behind his younger brother's back, helping him to stand up.

"Who the hell are you?" he growled, showing his teeth in a ferocious grimace. His eyes were hard and cold as stone.

"This is Balthazar. He was in my garrison until last year, when I declared him dead, under his precise request." answered briskly Castiel, relaxing his muscles and putting away his blade. It was unnerving, how much modern English was limited. Millennia of friendship and common story reduced to a meaningless sentence. Sam followed the motion and relaxed slightly as well, but he didn't leave Adam's side and his glare remained dark, even when Castiel restored the boy's voice with a flick of his wrist.

Castiel gave him a reassuring nod, but his eyes darted immediately back to Balthazar. He was stunned. When he had given the Heavenly weapons to Castiel, the other angel had been adamant about his decision to leave Heaven and enjoy that so famous, or infamous, free will. Even if Castiel couldn't help but disapproving Balthazar's peculiar interest for expensive drinks and sexual intercourse with an indefinite number of partners. 'No more rules.' he had said, and then he had disappeared to enjoy his hedonistic interests without turning back. So, the question now was, what was Balthazar doing there? Something moved at the door, and Castiel's eyes fell on a second foreign angel in the hallway, inside a female vessel he didn't recognize. Then he looked her with more attention, and blinked in surprise.

_Haniel?_

Her vessel was weirdly deformed, and he could easily perceive a forming Grace inside her, now. He frowned in confusion. Haniel hadn't been in his garrison, and he didn't know her very well, but he hadn't thought she could be the kind of angel who fell in love with a human enough to generate a Nephilim child in her vessel.

"Hey, Cassie. Lovely to see you around. Still constipated as always, I see." said Balthazar with a big grin before Castiel could utter a word. Then the other angel looked down, saw Dean's corpse, and let go a loud whistle.

"You know, if you really love him, you don't have to stare at him like a kicked puppy, you only need to make him come back."

Castiel blinked a couple of times, annoyed by his sentence.

"I'm surprised to see you here, brother. I thought you didn't want anything to do with me and the civil war." he said as he cocked his head, still looking at them.

"You can bet on it. I, for me, have not hero complex. But Hannah here needs help, and since you like so much to play the serving knight..." Balthazar looked nervous, and he had all reasons to be.

Castiel was perfectly aware that Balthazar had kept some of the weapons for himself, and he had reason to suspect the other angel was moonlighting like a common crossroads demon, even if he had no way to ascertain it. He was surprised that Bobby hadn't stopped them, but maybe he didn't have the courage to stop a pregnant woman. It was something that humans did, to not argue with a pregnant woman. He asked himself why. Hannah came inside and she paled slightly as her eyes fell on Dean and on Sam's ferocious expression. It was so intimidating it came easy to believe Sam was supposed to be Lucifer's vessel.

"Why is she with you and what do you want, Balthazar?" asked Castiel, looking at her with a little squint.

"I need help for me and my baby." she said smiling sadly. It was a trick of his vessel's eyes, or was she glowing?

Castiel decided that he wasn't going to have this conversation in the same room where Dean was unconscious, so he made them move in the living room with a jerk of his head. Sam followed the two visitors downstairs, not without giving Cas a long glance that, as the angel had learnt in the last two years, meant he was ready to intervene at the first sight of danger. Adam sat on the windowsill, his pale eyes burning with rage.

In the living room, Castiel discovered why Bobby hadn't stopped the newcomers. Balthazar had frozen him. Sam appeared to be torn between worry and downright amusement. Castiel glared at Balthazar without a word. Balthazar shrugged and gave him a small smirk.

"I preferred him this way. Less noisy. Don't you find noise incredibly annoying?" he asked. Castiel rolled his eyes and made another swift movement with his hand.

"... out of my house, you damned son of a-"

Bobby blinked in confusion and gaped at Castiel. Then his eyes found Balthazar and he gritted his teeth in fury.

"He _mojoed_ me!" he thundered pointing at the angel and spluttering curses, then his eyes fell on Hannaah.

"What the hell?" he snapped to Castiel pointing his hand toward the woman. "Uh, I meant... with all respects." he added after a second as his glare darted on her belly. She seemed at her seventh or eighth month of pregnancy.

"They are two angels, Bobby. Balthazar and Haniel. They want help." Castiel informed him. Bobby's eyes became twice their usual side.

"Since when is my house a haven for falling angels? Balls." he grumbled, but after a moment he waved briskly at Hannah and Balthazar.

"At least sit down, you idjits... with all respect, m'dam."

"Didn't know Bobby could be so polite." commented Sam with a little grin as he sat soundlessly on the seat-back of the couch. Probably the two angels regretted deeply it at the very moment they sat and Castiel towered over them like a storm, his eyes almost inhumanly blue as he stared down at them.

"Explain yourselves." he demanded in an emotionless voice.

"I hope you like long stories, Cas. It'll take a while. And drama. We have a lot of it." drawled Balthazar, conjuring a glass of red wine and taking a tentative sip.

SNSNSNSNSNSN

"C'mon Tess, give me something…" sweet-talked Dean with his most bright grin. Tessa crossed her arms on his chest, and she didn't appear amused when Dean's eyes followed the motion and lingered on her deep neckline.

"Listen, Dean, it's not so simple. I can't. Really. I'm sorry, but I won't give you a ritual or something like that." she sighed, shaking her head. She didn't appear to be pleased from her denials, but her eyes were hard and her mouth was pressed into a very thin line. Dean cursed internally, even if he was careful to set his face on the smiling expression he used on women when he wanted something from them.

_Now how am I going to say to the others that I failed?, _he thought angrily. Sam... he was going to lose his little brother another freaking time, and he wasn't sure he could bear it. Not again. And what he was going to say to Adam? The kid didn't deserve that life. He was just about ready to plead and implore, when something caught his attention. It was just a slight quiver in the corner of his left eye, but for a well-trained hunter like him that was enough. He turned around, automatically searching for his gun. His hand touched only the skin of his back.

_Shit._

When Cas had 'killed' him, Dean's Colt 1911 was on the table. He had not weapons on him. But Tessa was a Reaper. They would be fine. What could kill the death itself? Well, except Alastair when he had used the Death's Scythe. But that was a particular circumstance, wasn't it?

There were other movements behind some cars.

"What the hell is there?" he hissed as his eyes darted between Tessa and the shadows. Why it wasn't never easy?

"Well…." her voice trailed off as she stiffened and flexed her muscles. She looked worried, and noticing that Dean started to feel very nervous. If there was something that scared a Reaper, he surely didn't want to meet the freakin' thing.

"Other Reapers." she eventually murmured. Her hair, moved by the wind, went on her face, giving her a grim appearance. Dean turned abruptly to look at her.

"Son of a bitch." he spluttered. "What the hell they want? I thought it was one Reaper for one soul, like some cosmic rule or stuff like that!"

"Usually it is." muttered Tessa. Her face was stormy and her eyes flickered red as she gave a long glare to Dean. "A lot of Reapers want the honor to take you, or your brother. But don't get too a big head, it's only because in this way they would have a special recognition."

Dean resisted to the urgency to scream. What was with supernatural monsters and his family? It looked like everything they met wanted something from him or his baby brother. Fuckin' sons of a bitch.

"What kind of recognition?" he asked, bracing himself for the worst. Tessa smiled darkly. Her skin appeared as white as a polished bone.

"It's not something I can tell you, but they want it badly, believe me." she smirked.

"Super…" muttered Dean. He looked around, but now the place was quiet. Then something clicked in his mind.

"But Cas is going to take me back, so what they want?" he asked. There were, like, another twenty minutes, then Cas was going to drag him back on his body, with or without a solution.

"They don't care." answered Tessa with a little shrug. "They are going to take your soul anyway, that you want it or not."

"Impossible. Reapers had to wait the soul to be ok with that." pointed out Dean. He had the sneaking suspect Tessa would have dragged his screaming and kicking soul right to Heaven by pulling his hair, if she had been able to.

"Yeah. When you don't want to break or ruin it." she replied absent-mindedly. This last sentence brought the ice in Dean's heart. There were at least three Reapers around the place, and he had no weapons. He was so screwed. He could almost see Cas' smug face as he said '_told you'_. Except that he wasn't going to hear him, and Sam and Adam would have been stuck like that forever.

Tessa's eyes went through him with clinical attention.

"Have you any weapon?" she asked.

"No." answered shortly Dean. No reason to dance around it. Her lips became once again a very thin line.

"You could have thought about it." she hissed.

"I left my gun on the table before Cas killed me! I didn't expect to have a problem like this!" protested Dean, feeling very vulnerable. He hadn't gone anywhere without a weapon since he had been eight, and now he felt naked. And how the fuck was he supposed to take a gun with him if he was technically _dead_?

"That's why you never think!" she spat, then she rolled her wrist and took out from nowhere a black staff and a scythe made of some kind of dark metal. Dean felt sick. He had already seen weapons similar to that. In Hell. He had used those. He wondered if a ghost could throw up. Tessa looked again at him, up and down and up again, and made a face. She turned the scythe in a black knife, nodded and handed him that. Clearly she thought that Dean didn't give his best with staffs or scythes. Immediately Dean felt lightheaded and the world started to spin around him. He stumbled, then he straightened up and tightened his grasp around the knife. He wasn't going to show weakness in front of a bunch of monsters, even if they were as pretty as Tessa.

"I'm sorry. That particular metal slowly infects the souls." said Tessa as she turned until she was back to back with Dean. The hunter snorted. He had been in Hell, he was perfectly able to use that weapon without being hurt, even if it was going to slow him down a bit. The thing was, while it had no importance when torturing a soul, right now the matter was very relevant.

"This thing will only make easier for them to grab me." he muttered darkly as he took a step backward. Tessa's body was tense and as cold as ice against his spine, and he shivered.

"Then manage to make it difficult." snapped the Reaper, swinging her staff in her hands. "And if you survive, I'll tell you what you want to know."

SNSNSNSNSNSN

As Hannah spoke, Sam observed Castiel's face morphing from cold interest to worry, disapprobation and incredulity, until he arrived to complete astonishment. When Balthazar ended telling how he had taken Hannah to them and how he had found Castiel (basically popping them in every place linked to the Winchesters he could think about, when he had established the other angel wasn't in Heaven), there were some minutes of absolute silence. Only then Castiel managed to speak.

"You… procreate with one of our brothers…." he stuttered, gaping at Hannah with very round eyes.

Silence. Again. But this time it was worst. Sam thought that maybe it would have been better if Cas had never opened his mouth.

"Cas?" he said "You still with us, man?"

He didn't answer, but started staring at Hannah with deep disapproval. She shot at him a hard look, stood up, and slapped him hard enough to leave a red print on his right cheek for the remains of the afternoon.

"That must hurt, my friend. Believe me, I know." sighed Balthazar with a shrug. He was at the end of his third bottle of red wine, and he wasn't even a bit tipsy. Castiel slowly took his hand to his cheek, staring at Hannah in disbelief. He resembled so much a scolded child that Sam almost laughed. Bobby opened his mouth, then he closed it again, clearly worried that a slap from an angel could easily break his neck.

"Ain't incest?" he asked eventually with a rough voice, probably hoping that Castiel was going to protect him from Hannah's wrath. Sam glared at the angels with some curiosity, since he had been asked himself exactly the same thing. He had never understood if the angelic meaning of brotherhood was equivalent to the human one. Even if judging from the way they killed each other, it seemed quite unlikely.

Hannah had become very red and was looking punctiliously at her shoes.

"Incest is a human term, related to genetic issues and sexual reproduction. It had nothing to do with angels. And it's not unheard of angels who share a very profound bond through their Graces." explained Castiel, still with that disapproving expression. "However..." he added, more sternly that Sam had ever heard him. "... it is against our law to initiate a carnal relationship with a human, and even more with an angel."

"Rules, rules, rules." huffed Balthazar, waving his hand. "All these Heaven bureaucrats can't think about anything else. Honestly."

"You don't understand." said Hannah on the verge of tears. "What we had, it was... We were in _love_." she turned to Castiel, shaking slightly and waving helplessly her hands. "I don't expect you to understand, but you have no right to judge me."

Sam stood up and floated next to Hannah. He tried to put his arm around her shoulder, and even if his attempt had no results, she gave him a watery smile.

"It's alright." he assured her. "I understand what means to lose a loved one." He swallowed and felt a pang of sadness running through him. _Jessica..._

"You have my protection." sighed reluctantly Castiel. "But there is something still eluding my comprehension. Why did Nathaniel want your abomi- your child?"

Hannah's eyes were fixed on nothingness.

"I have no idea."

Castiel looked like he wanted to investigate further, but then they heard a yell from the bedroom upstairs.

SNSNSNSNSNSN

From behind the broken cars came out six reapers. Only one of them had a human form like Tessa, while the others were more similar to ghosts or zombies. The human had a sword, similar to Cas's angel blade, while for the other two of them had a staff like Tessa and the last three had the more classic Reaper weapon, a scythe. Obviously, Dean was facing the ones with that particular kind of weapon.

_And I have only a damned little knife_, he thought, feeling covered in cold sweat everywhere. _Maybe it's time that I get a staff. Or a scythe._

One of the zombie-like Reaper smiled at Dean. It wasn't exactly a paradisaic sight, his teeth were long and yellow, and he smelled so bad Dean would have puked if he hadn't been so well trained.

"Dean Winchester." drawled the Reaper, sending another stench of rotting stink in the air. "You should come with us. We can bring you to the other world in a better way than Tessa's."

"No, thanks." smirked Dean, trying to breathe with his mouth as much as he could. "I like her more than all of you sons of a bitch. I don't care about your 'it's a dog eat dog, eat cat too' thing. You can blow me for how much I care."

"Oh, really? Well, then we'll have to do it in the hard way." His smile became a creepy laugh, giving the chills to Dean. The hunter lifted the knife, waiting for them.

They attacked at once. Tessa was good, very good. With a single wide swirl of her staff, she managed to take two her opponents down, then she rolled it and crossed it with the staff of one of the other Reapers. Then Dean had to twirl to avoid one of the Reaper scythes, and he lost sight of her. Even with the metal of the knife slowly eating him away, he still was more than a match for the Reapers. The problem was, for most of the time he could only duck the scythes, because he couldn't reach his enemies with his knife, being his attacks always too slow or too far to hit properly his opponents. At last, he managed to hit one of them, cutting his throat in a fluid motion. The familiar thrill due to cut again flesh that way was, however, quickly overpowered by the astonishment.

The Reaper started to bleed, and with the red blood came out from the wound also a reddish light, which expanded itself until the whole body started to emanate it. It became impossible to look at him, but in a few seconds it began to decrease and the body -now all black or dark red-dissolved itself in a magenta cloud, that dissipated in the air. And all of it happened in absolute silence.

_What the hell…_ he thought frantically, wiping the sweat from his forehead. He had already seen a Reaper die, back when Alistair was breaking the seals, and sure as hell it wasn't like this. Then one of the scythes hit his left arm and he yelled in pain.

He felt like his very essence was being torn apart. The pain and the shock were so great that he was barely aware that one of the Reapers had grabbed the wounded arm. It was like if someone had just put on his flesh some acid. His sight became fogged as he yelled with all his voice.

SNSNSNSNSNSN

"Come here, come here!"

Castiel didn't wait for Sam to go upstairs or to Bobby to understand what was going on, but he teleported immediately inside the room, feeling his vessel's hear drumming wildly against his ribcage. What he saw made him feel sick.

Dean's corpse had become even paler, and on his left arm was appearing a sort of big contusion. In less than a second it covered the whole arm. In a panicked rush, Castiel ripped the Dean's shirt open, and saw that the contusion was expanding itself in heart direction.

"I don't understand, he was fine a moment ago!" yelled Adam, completely hysteric. Sam had thrown himself through the door, without listening to the yells of a completely bewildered Bobby.

"Dean! What's going on?" he shouted.

"I'm making him come back." Castiel said resolutely. But when he was going to put his hand on Dean's chest, the bruise stopped growing and reabsorbed itself, until it vanished. Castiel paused, his palm at inches from Dean's heart.

"What are you waiting for?! Call him back!" demanded Sam, hitting the wall with his big fist.

"He wouldn't want me to call him back now." whispered the angel, closing his eyes. Dean was fine. He had made Castiel _promise_ to not call him back before time.

"I don't care! I can't stay here and doing nothing!" thundered Sam.

"Then pray." answered Castiel. Sam snapped his mouth closed and walked past Adam and toward the bed.

"C'mon, man." he said, leaning on Dean with a pained expression. "Don't die on me now."

Castiel looked at them and swallowed, without knowing if he was praying or just wishing.

_You can do this, Dean, _he thought. _And come back to us. Come back to me._

SNSNSNSNSNSN

Dean would probably have been dead if it wasn't for Tessa. The Reaper had already put her attackers in condition to not hurt, disarming the human-like one, who now lay unconscious on the floor, and killing the zombie-ones, who were dissolving in two magenta clouds at that exact moment. The two Reapers still standing had snarled in fury and had thrown themselves on Dean, managing to grasp him when he was still dazed from the wound, just before Tessa had stopped the others. Tessa rolled her staff and separate them from Dean, who fell on the floor, catching his breath as Tessa jumped between the hunter and the two Reapers. Dean tried to stand up and help, but he couldn't. Right now it was too difficult even to keep his eyes open. He cursed and pressed a hand on the wound, gritting his teeth as waves of pain run through his arm.

The two Reapers took distance, scared, and exchanged a worried look. Tessa had killed two of them and knocked out another one like it was the simplest thing in the world, and clearly this had made them wary.

"C'mon. Tessa, let him to us." said one of them in a reasonable tone. "You are already Death's favorite Reaper, you won't have anything from bringing him to the other world."

_Death's favorite Reaper?_, thought Dean, stunned. He hadn't taken Death as an 'I-choose-a-favorite-one' kind of man. Spirit. Horseman. Whatever he was.

"He is one of my souls." snarled Tessa, pointing the staff against the other Reaper's chest. "It's my duty to protect his integrity before I take him to the other world. Get out of here, he is _mine_. I won't leave him to you. Think about your own souls!"

The reapers didn't move, and Tessa's mouth quivered in a cold smile.

"Go away now and I won't tell Death that you attacked me." she smirked in a low voice.

"Fine." snarled the second Reaper. "But it doesn't end here."

And with that they grasped their unconscious companion and disappeared within a blink. Tessa turned and pulled Dean on his feet in a fluid motion.

"Way to be possessive, Tess." grumbled Dean, moving tentatively his arm. It hurt like a bitch. Tessa shook her head.

"Go away, Dean, before you get hurt." she said in a flat voice. He lifted his chin and beamed at her.

"I don't think so, sweetheart. You own me, remember? You promised to give me answers."

"I did." agreed coldly Tessa. "A Reaper do not eat his word. But I'll not repeat it another time, so you have to listen very carefully."

"And I suppose I can't have paper and pen." he sighed. "Awesome."

Tessa's words were fast and precise, her speech without technicalities Dean wouldn't have understood, but it was still difficult to remember every step she described.

"No, wait, what was that last one?" he asked with a rush of panic. What if he did this wrong and Sammy woke up in a turtle's body? Or as a giraffe? Okay, maybe that wouldn't be such a great difference, but Dean was pretty sure one couldn't speak with a turtle or a giraffe. And no, it wasn't the adrenaline that made him blabbering.

"A tear of a Reaper." mouthed Tessa, raising one eyebrow. Dean scratched the back of his head.

"And are you going to give me that one, aren't you?" he asked hopefully. How much he would have liked to have Sam's puppy eyes now. When it came to women, it was like Sam had a neon label that read 'poor kid without a mum'. It had been like that since they were at school and every teacher swooned over little Sammy. Bobby's label said something on the line of 'rough teddy bear inside', and Cas... well, he was Cas.

Dean was pretty sure _his_ own label read 'god of sex', or 'menace', it depended from who was reading it. Which was great in some circumstances, but right now he felt the puppy eyes thing would have been more useful.

Tessa's mouth twitched, but he wasn't sure if she was smiling or pulling a face.

"I don't feel really in crying mood." she said tilting her head. Yep, that was a smile. Dean gave her his most charming grin.

"C'mon, Tess, sweetheart, I'm sure you can help." he soothed with a wink. Tessa sighed.

"Here." she said, giving him a little vial. The fluid inside was dark and dense, and the glass was freezing cold. "Try to not lose it when you return to life."

He nodded and gave a look at the sun. One hour had surely passed.

"Thank you, Tessa." he said. He smiled at her.

"This is the first true smile you gave me today." she smirked. He threw his head backward and laughed. Now that he knew he could get Sammy back, he felt so much lighter. And Adam surely hadn't deserved to die only because he had been a douche-bag and said yes to Michael.

"Hey, I know you love me anyway." he chuckled. Tessa gave him a last half smile and turn her shoulders at him.

"Hey, wait!" he shouted as her figure melted with the shadows on the ground. "What was all that red thing with the dead Reapers? Death's Scythe didn't kill you guys like that!"

Tessa turned her head slightly and her eyes flinched with a spectral light.

"That was Death's Scythe. It takes a life as it was a blade of grass. What you saw is how a Reaper dies. Total annihilation. Humans have Heaven or Hell, and the monsters have Purgatory, but the children of Death, the children of Lucifer, and the children of your God, they have nothing. There is no afterlife for the fallen."

The last words were lost in a rush of wind, leaving Dean alone in the junkyard. He blinked in confusion. What the hell had that been? Then he suddenly felt a burning pain just above his heart, and he barely managed to tighten his hold on the vial Tessa had given him before everything went dark.

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	6. Chapter 6

_Hi everyone! So, we know this story is not well loved, but for the few ones who are enjoying it, sadly we are heading to a place where there is no connection. Yeah, places like that still exist. So, we'll try to upload, but don't think this story had died if nothing shows up in the next two months or so. Sorry guys._

_Have fun :)_

**Chapter 6**

Sam looked again at the clock around his wrist.

"Time is up. Take him back _now_!" he ordered, with a muscle twitching in his jaw.

Castiel nodded. Sam would never have been so demanding if he was asking something for himself, but he was asking for his brother, and that gave him the right to be demanding.

The angel pressed his hand on Dean's bare chest. Immediately, the man's body took color and, within a minute, he snapped his eyes open and jerked upright, taking fast deep breaths, like if he had just come out from the water. He coughed a bit as Castiel put one hand on his back, holding his forearm and helping him to properly sit up. Dean's hand went to his left arm, like if he was expecting to find a wound.

"Is he fine?" asked anxiously Sam, while Adam floated next to him, peering above his shoulder to see.

"You aren't harmed, Dean." Castiel reassured him and the two younger men in one sentence, and he took a step back as Dean put experimentally his feet on the floor.

"Good." muttered the hunter. "Man, I feel like... dunno', like I've spent hours running a marathon. Or something like that."

Castiel frowned and scanned Dean's body, searching for injuries. Everything seemed to be fine, the heart was beating steadily and the lungs were working without problems. Castiel allowed himself to relax.

Bobby stalked inside the room and went right to Dean, his eyes burning.

"You, boy." he barked poking Dean's chest. "One day, ya're gonna kick the bucket, and when ya'll do, hell if I'll cry for you!"

Dean chuckled and hit playfully the old man's cap.

"Woah, Bobby. Missed you too." he smiled. Castiel felt a warm sensation curling in his chest as he observed Bobby and Sam fussing over Dean, even if Dean couldn't see his brother. Adam was looking at his feet, and Castiel couldn't understand why he was smiling when he looked so embarrassed as well, but it was nice. It was weird, the conception humans had of _family._ Angels weren't like that.

"Ok, dudes, I need to eat. Bobby, tell me you have pie." announced loudly Dean. Sam snickered.

"I got some burgers, but if you want pie you gotta buy it." muttered Bobby. Dean's eyes lit up.

"Burgers! That's _great_. And I'm going to eat yours too, Sammy. You can share with Adam." he grinned, taking a big step into the hallway.

"Nice thing with Dean, he appreciates the little things." smiled Sam as he followed his brother, tagged along by Bobby and Adam.

Castiel sat on the edge of the mattress, stretching experimentally his Grace. A resurrection wasn't exactly what he had had in mind, and the wing wounded by Raphael's angels twitched painfully. He lifted one hand in front of his face and found it was shaking slightly. He sighed and dropped it on his lap. There wasn't much he could do about that.

Dean stuck his head in the room, glaring at the angel with an arched eyebrow.

"You coming, Cas?" he asked. The angel stood up and found himself smiling without really knowing the reason.

"Of course." he said. Dean grinned and run downstairs, but just before Castiel actually could join him, the hunter let go a shout.

"_Who the hell are you?!"_

SNSNSNSNSNSNSNSNSN

Dean was stunned.

_A guy dies for an evening - no, for __**one freakin' hour **__- and look what happens!_

In front of him, comfortably seated on Bobby's couch, there were a man and a pregnant woman. The woman kept looking around, like if she expected someone to appear and kill her, while the man was way _too _comfortable. And this was really annoying Dean.

"What the hell, man?" he asked with his most irritating tone of voice as he turned to Cas. And he did it on purpose.

"They are two of my sibling, Dean. Balthazar and Haniel." answered flatly the angel.

"Hannah." corrected the woman in the same flat voice. "I chose that name as tribute to Anael. I believe you knew her."

"Oh, great, more angels. Son of a bitch." muttered Dean, rolling his eyes. And a fan of Anna no less. Now, Anna was petite, and Dean used to like her quite a lot, but that was _before_ she tried to kill his mother to avoid Sam's birth. And he wasn't going to take the same crap from another angel girl with big eyes and nice boobs.

Bobby scratched his head, embarrassed. And in Dean's opinion, he ought to be. His anti-angel wards were crap. Then something clicked in Dean's mind, and he turned his attention on the man - Balthazar.

"Dude. Did you knock her up?!" he said, pointing at Hannah with his thumb.

"Of course _not_!" drawled the angel with an expression of repulsion plastered on his face. "Really, humanity these days… you don't know what respect is anymore. Never got what you find in these hairless apes, Cassie. Honestly."

"Cassie?" Dean mouthed soundlessly at Cas, chuckling evilly. But the angel ignored him, killing his fun.

Balthazar leaned down on the couch and gave them a shit-eating smirk. "By the way, I have to go. I did my part in all this story, and now I have a _menage a_... what's the word for twelve?" he asked. Then he shrugged and jumped to his feet with cat-like agility. "You know what, never mind. See you in the next centuries, Cassie."

And with that he disappeared, just in time to not hear Dean cursing at him and at the angel kind in general.

"Balthazar can be... difficult to endure." commented Castiel with something that resembled embarrass. Dean gave him a long look.

"Then…" he squared the angel with a suspect sneaking in his head. "The baby isn't yours, is it?"

For some reason the idea of Cas having children made him feel unease, even if he couldn't tell why.

"Of course not, Dean." sighed Castiel without lowering his eyes. "It's forbidden."

"Of course." Dean rolled his eyes at the angel, even if he felt better and more relaxed. He turned his attention to Hannah.

"Now, I don't want to be rude, sweetheart, but what do you want here? Because our hands are kinda full at this time."

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could answer Castiel gave Dean a sort of short summary. Dean frowned.

"Awesome. That's _exactly _what I needed." he muttered.

"I'm under Castiel's protection now." Hannah informed him rather smugly. "He gave me his word."

"By Light, Grace and Fire, in our Father's name." deadpanned Castiel. "There is no way to break a promise like this. It would poison me to take my word back."

The hunter whistled loudly.

"You must be freakin' kidding me." he said shaking his head. "Honestly, of all the things, an angel getting knocked up is the weirdest shit of all."

Hannah's mouth became a thin line as she tilted her chin in a rather aristocratic manner, but she clearly considered Dean's outburst too underneath her to give a reply.

"Sam said you are an uncivil, Dean." Castiel informed the room before the woman could answer. Bobby snorted.

"Geez, thanks, Sammy. Go bitching in some other corner, or I wouldn't tell you how to take back your stupid too-big-to-be-normal body." snapped Dean, looking around him as if he hoped to catch a glimpse of his little brother.

"What the hell are ya waiting for, boy? Tell us how!" ordered briskly Bobby, giving him an incredulous look. Dean shook his head. He was starting to feel the exhaustion of his experience, and now that the rush of adrenaline was fading, he realized he could barely keep his eyes open.

"Listen, it was a long hour. Give me some space. Can I have that buggers first?" he asked, barely holding a loud yawn.

Bobby looked at him in disbelief, and even Castiel seemed perplexed, while Hannah kept looking out of the window with wary eyes, clearly not really interested in the question. Eventually, Bobby stood up and went to the kitchen, where he threw a plate on the table.

"Here. But I'm not cooking for you, boy, so take here your ass and I'll give you the freakin' pan."

SNSNSNSNSNSN

It ended with Dean speaking and eating at the same time, which earned him a wrinkled nose from Hannah.

"It's a damned complex ritual" Bobby said when Dean finished to tell them what Tessa had said to him, and finished his burger around the same moment. "You got the tears of a Reaper, and of course we have the blood of a relative-"

Dean snorted, and Bobby steadily ignored him. He loved the Winchester boys, he really did, but sometimes Dean managed to piss him off, and the best way to avoid it usually was to ignore him.

"-but the bone of an enemy'll be complicated. We gotta get something they had touched to burn, and the incantation is not something I've ever heard of."

He threw a glance to Castiel, who tilted his head on one side with a little frown.

"It isn't something unheard." he said slowly, thinking. "They currently are soul and spirit, and the charm will regenerate the bodies, making them whole. I already knew it, but I wasn't sure if I could use it or not." Then he turned to the kitchen door and, from Dean and Bobby's point of view, he started to talk with the cupboard. "You two will have your bodies for the dawn."

Dean's face was focused and his expression intense as he leaned forward, tapping his wrist with his fingers. "Ok, first thing, we need something they had touched and that belongs to them without any doubts."

They quickly realized there was a problem when it came to Adam. For Sam, it was simple: Dean had only to pick up one of his brother's favorite shirts ("You are lucky that I never throw away anything, Sammy"), but they had nothing that belonged to Adam.

"I could go to his mother's house and take something." proposed Dean. He was still sitting at the kitchen table, and he was swinging on his chair, that was in precarious balance on two legs. Bobby swore to himself that, if Dean tried to put his feet on the table, he was going to smack the boy on the head.

"And what if ya take something that belonged to his mother?". Bobby had thought his question was more than reasonable, but Dean's face lengthened in an almost funny way, showing he was annoyed.

"Ok, then _Cas_ will go there with Adam in tow to take something. Better?" drawled the young man taking a sip of his beer. Bobby's eyebrows joined in a frown as he valued the matter.

"And what if the last one who touched that thing wasn't the boy, but one of the ghouls?" he asked.

Dean rolled his eyes with an expression of distaste for Bobby's pessimism.

"It's always something he had touched, it'll be fine!" he insisted. "Or we could say the same about Sam's shirts, I have touched them a lot of times."

"It's different." argued Bobby.

"It's the same." answer Dean.

"It's. Different."

Before Dean could answer - probably with a curse- Cas stepped in with a calm voice. "Dean is right. It's the same." he said, and for a second Bobby suspected he had heard a hint of affection in the angel's voice. "If the object used to belong to the person, it will be enough."

"See?" smirked Dean with a satisfied tone, like if the fact was his merit. Bobby shook his head.

"Fine, you idjit. While your angel does that, we gotta summon a demon." he snapped in a rough voice. Dean frowned and blinked a couple of times, then his face opened in comprehension.

"And get its bones!" he said, letting the chair falling on all four legs with a loud thump. Bobby gave him a dark grin. That was going to be the messy part, but they weren't hunters because they weren't able to tolerate a little blood sometimes.

SNSNSNSNSNSNS

_Being home again hurt like hell._

Castiel had just teleported them and Adam already wanted to run far far away.

Instead, he had to stay there and choose one of his objects, the one he could destroy without too much regret. He found the task rather difficult, more difficult than he could ever have thought. Everything reminded him his mother and happier and naiver days, when monsters, demons and angels are only stories good to scare children.

They were in his living room and the angel was looking expectantly at him. Adam felt nervous enough near the angel in any regular moment, but that glare so much focused on him wasn't helping. He cleared his throat. "The things down here aren't good. They belonged to my mother too."

He was actually surprised that the house hadn't been sold and all their belongings destroyed. He wondered if someone had actually noticed he and his mother had been blown away from Earth. It was kinda depressing.

Castiel cocked his head and his eyes darted back and forth as he catalogued every object in the room.

"Then where will we find something that used to belong to your person only?" he asked in a deadpan.

'_To your person' but doesn't he hear himself?, _thought angrily Adam, setting his jaw in a hard line.

"Upstairs, in my room." he drawled, and without other words he led the angel in his old room. It was the first time he entered there in almost a year, and that hurt too. It was unchanged, like nothing had happened, like he still was a normal guy, just entered at the Medical University. His bed was perfectly made, his desk was a mess of books, magazines and dirty shirts, all covered in dust, and on his bed-table the alarm-clock was still ticking.

The thing he wanted most right now was to run away, so he grabbed the first book he saw, the chemistry one -_Ah, that's destiny! _- and turned around to look at the angel.

"Do you think this would be fine?" he asked, lifting the book in his hand.

"If it belongs to you, yes." rebutted Castiel. Adam hated that unemotional voice, that stiff posture and that blank face. He hated it because it reminded him of Michael, of being burnt inside and outside by the Archangel's Grace. When the Archangel had landed over him, everything had been power and heat and pure energy, and then Michael's voice had asked him, Adam had said yes. It hadn't even crossed his mind to say 'no'. How do you say no to an Archangel? And then, it had been just confusion and pain, and sometimes Michael's thoughts flickered inside Adam, and they were cold and alien without any measures.

Adam knew Castiel was different, that somehow he _cared, _and he knew Michael had saved him and Sam, but sometimes he wondered if there was actually something behind that cold angelic facade.

"But I used to hate it." he muttered. Castiel didn't appear concerned by it.

"Better. It will be more powerful if it is connected to a determinate feeling. Let's go." he said, and with that he pushed his hand right where Adam's heart would have been if he had been corporeal.

_Here we go again. I get why Dean hates it_, he thought, bracing himself for the wave of queasiness that was going to hit him between a minute. And how it was possible for him to be queasy if he was a freakin' spirit?!

It was all the angels' fault.

SNSNSNSNSNSN

The demon currently trapped in Bobby's basement was inside the body of a middle aged man with a short beard and dark hair. His eyes were pitch black as he waved savagely the chains that tied him to the chair in the middle of the pentacle carefully drawn on the floor with red picture.

"I'm going to get out of here, and when I'll do, I'll break your bones and suck your marrow." he hissed. Bobby huffed and sprinkled the demon with saint water. The demon yelled and threw his head back, hitting the chair with the back of his head.

"You animals!" spluttered the demon, breathing heavily.

"Yeah, I'd be more touched if we haven't got you while you were trying to rope in little girls at the park." snarled Dean with an expression of utter disgust. He was grasping his knife so tightly his hands seemed bloodless. "How many did you rape and kill, you bastard? Three? Four? The last one was only ten!"

"Ya see, demon, Dean doesn't like who messes up with little kids." smirked Bobby. "But we need something from you, so this may be your lucky day."

"I've already told you, I'll not give you my bones!" shrieked the demon. Dean's mouth quivered as he stalked up the demon, his eyes burning with something that almost resembled lust. His fingers hitched from the desire to stab the demon, to make him _suffer._

"Wrong answer, you son of a bitch." he hissed as he poured salt in the mouth of the demon. He coughed up blood and tried to bite Dean's fingers, but the hunter drew back too quickly for allowing him to do so.

"If... if I give you some demon's bones... some other demon's..." panted the demon as he tried to lick away the blood from the corner of his mouth. "... will you free me?"

"That could work." nodded roughly Bobby. The demon shook his head and spat other blood, mixed with mucus and phlegm.

"Go... to the cemetery near... near the town. Carl... Hallway... he became a demon almost twenty years ago..."

"I'll check that. I know a spell that could help." muttered Bobby to Dean in a low voice. Dean nodded and pulled roughly the demon's hair, forcing him to tilt his head and expose his throat. The demon widened his eyes in terror.

"No, wait!" he yelled hysterically. "You can't! You promised, you _fucking promised_!"

"I promised you that you were going to be free. And it's what I'm doing." snarled Dean with a grim expression, and with that he tightened his grip around the handle of the demon-killing knife and he cut the demon's throat in one swift motion. The warm blood sprawled in his face and clothes, and the sweet, metallic scent of it made him almost sick.

"Ya alright, boy?" asked Bobby with a concerned expression. Dean nodded shortly and wiped his hands on his jeans.

"Yeah." he said shortly. "If I have to kill ten thousand of these damned sons of a bitch to have Sam back, I would."

He threw the knife on the table with a disgusted expression. What he needed now was a beer.

SNSNSNSNSNSN

Sam breathed nervously as he stood in the middle of an intricate symbol Bobby had painted on the floor with Dean's blood. Dean was sitting on the chair, with a white rug tightly wrapped around his arm and a beer in his hand. He and Bobby were both covered with the blood of the demon they had summoned, and who had given them the bones that were in a pile in front of Sam. Together with the bones there were an old shirt and Adam's book, both wet with the Reaper's tears.

"He shouldn't do that." muttered Adam. "Drink like that, I mean. He lost blood, and alcohol can cause hypoglycemia, and..."

"I doubt he cares." commented dryly Sam. Dean had drunk before, after and sometimes even during cases since he was eighteen, and it didn't really matter anyway, considering that hunters rarely lived enough to regret their alternative lifestyle. They usually got killed first.

"It should be bigger." drawled Hannah, tilting her head to stare at the symbol and giving a pointed glare to Castiel. Castiel's face didn't morph from his blank expression, but Sam was sure the angel was actually pissed off from Hannah's continue critics.

"Now, we gotta read the spell and I'll put the bones on fire while ya boy pour the tears." announced Bobby as he stood up and wiped his hands on his already dirty jeans, leaving bloody fingerprints everywhere. Dean tensed like a wolf in front of blood.

"What if it doesn't work?" he asked. Bobby gave him a long look.

"We try with something else." he answered roughly, and Sam felt the need to go and hug the old man like he never had. One could always count on Bobby.

Castiel held one hand over the bones and his eyes met Sam's.

"Are you ready?" he asked in a concerned voice. Sam hesitated and exchanged a glance with Adam, then he nodded.

"We are ready." he confirmed. Castiel narrowed his eyes and then something happened. He seemed to grow in height as his eyes shined with blue light and power emanated from his body. Fire exploded, burning the bones with a loud hiss, and black smoke came from it. Sam felt suddenly queasy, and his legs were weak like if they were made of jelly.

"_Mrta jīvana mēm vāpasa ā gayā thā kyā, kyā khō gayā thā usakī jagaha para lauṭa āyā hai. Rakta, ām̐sū aura haddiyōṁ kē li'ē, jīvana kā pahiyā mērē ādēśa para ulaṭa hō sakatā hai_."

Sam felt a great pressure on his temples, like if his head was going to explode. Fire burned his limbs and then his chest, and suddenly he felt crushed under a great weight. He took a breath, and it was like breathing melted iron. He yelled in pain, and Adam yelled in the same moment, and suddenly he was falling, burying his head in someone's chest.

"Here, Sammy, I got you. I got you."

Sam heard Dean's voice somewhere near his forehead, and he gripped tightly to his brother's T-shirt, like he used to do when he was a child who kept falling everywhere. He slowly stood up, trying to become used to air once again. It felt a bit strange to have his body back.

"Man, you're heavy, Samsquatch." joked Dean as he helped the younger Winchester. "Breathe now."

He felt heavier, and he couldn't find his balance. He would have fallen again if Dean hadn't supported him, passing Sam's arm around his wide shoulders and gripping firmly his brother's side.

"Easy, now, big boy…" he said, leading him to a chair. Sam was barely aware of Bobby doing the same with Adam, because he was still too much concentrate on breathing. In and out. In and out. The oxygen burnt his lungs, but he kept breathing.

Bobby brought them a glass of water, while Dean kept asking if they are fine, something that Sam could not stand to with all his heart, but right now it felt almost nice. It was so _normal_.

"You sure you're alright? How many fingers am I holding?"

"I'm good, Dean, let it go. Really."

After they had assured him countless time they were fine, finally Dean turned, his eyes darting to the point where Cas had stood, but the angel wasn't there anymore.

Sam saw hurt in Dean's eyes, then a burning anger.

"He could have stayed a little more. Freakin' angel." he sputtered to no one in particular.

"He has work to do." Hannah said with a misconceived attempt to a shrug. It was the first time she had spoken to someone who wasn't Castiel.

_She has a very beautiful voice,_ Sam found himself thinking. Curious that he hadn't noticed that while she was helping Castiel during the ritual. Even if, 'helping' was a big word. She had stayed around and had started to give him orders like 'Do this, do that, you're doing it wrong' and so on. Sam suspected Castel had had a strategic escape to avoid the other angel, and he actually hadn't any 'work to do'.

"Maybe _you_ forced him to run away." Dean was muttering in the meanwhile, reaching Sam's same conclusion, then he shrugged and spun to face Adam.

"Here, do you want to try and stand up again?" he asked briskly.

The next four hours passed between stumbling and tripping as Sam and Adam tried to get used to have a body again. When he finally sat down on Bobby's porch, Sam's muscles were soaring and aching. He moaned as he stretched his long legs. Gravity was a horrible, horrible thing.

Dean dropped next to him with the grace of a rhino and handed him a beer.

"You alright, dude?" he asked, taking a sip of his own beer. Sam shrugged.

"Yeah, I think I'm good. I just need time, I think. How is Adam?" he asked. Dean let go a chuckle.

"Sleeping like a baby. Dude is short of stamina." he smirked. Sam laughed shortly and opened his bottle. God, had he missed food and drinks for all that time.

"What about you?" he asked after a few minutes of comfortable silence. "Still pissed off at Cas?"

"I'm not pissed!" protested Dean with an aghast expression. "Well, maybe a little. So what?" he added then in a louder voice. "He could at least have stayed to hear you and Adam thanking him. I hate when he does that. You know the dummy left the Impala in Lisa's garage? With all my stuff in the trunk. He freaking forgot my baby, can you believe it?"

Sam rolled his eyes at Dean's attitude. Of course it was _them_ who wanted to thank Cas, and not him.

_Figures. Or someone could think he has a heart. _He looked at his brother shaking his head. "You know, that isn't exactly believable, Dean. Everyone here knows that you'd like to say thanks to him too."

"Shut up." Dean snorted. His lips curved in a crooked smile as he tilted his head to stare at his brother. "I had a façade to maintain, you bitch."

"Jerk."

"But now I owe Cas. Again." added Dean with a softer voice after some seconds. "Not that I dislike it, I mean, I would do anything for Cas anyway, but if he continues to save us..."

Sam's eyebrows went almost to his hairline. That was pretty emotional for Dean.

"Do anything for him?" he asked with an amused and implying voice.

"Oh, shut up, Sammy!" snapped Dean with a half smile, hitting lightly his brother's arm with a punch. "I mean, I dunno', in a fight, in a new sort-of-Apocalypse, or something like that! And _stop laughing_!" he shouted punching again Sam's shoulder.

Sam just laughed louder, savoring the possibility to joke with his brother again.

SNSNSNSNSNSNSN

What the Winchesters didn't know was that Castiel hadn't really flown away, but had just disappeared from their eyes.

Well, he had flown away at one point, but only because he wanted to retrieve Dean's car. The angel knew Dean was pissed off at him because he had left her at that woman's house. Why the hunter was so obstinated to refer at it like if it was his daughter was behind Castiel's comprehension. Personally, he rather disliked the thing.

After he had teleported the car, he had given a glimpse to the house, just to be sure Sam and Adam were fine. He wasn't sure of the reason he had stayed unseen, but it had something to do with his fear of Dean's questions. In fact, he knew Dean well enough to know that, now that his brothers were fine, his mind would come back to 'what-was-doing-Cas-before-answer-me'. He was subject-centered like that, but Castiel didn't want to tell him about the civil war. Dean had already dealt with too much, he had endured too much. This was Castiel's burden to carry.

And right now Dean had managed to let Castiel speechless once again. He was simply stunned. He wouldn't ever expected a similar devotion from the man. It made him feel uncomfortable and happy all together.

"Well well, isn't this a little like stalking? You know who spies on people, Castiel? Spies." drawled a sarcastic voice behind him. Castiel turned abruptly, and if his vessel's eyes caught the sight of a fairly average man with black clothes, his angel's eyes could perfectly see behind the mask.

"Crowley." he said with a measured voice, casting a fast look behind his shoulders, where the Winchesters were still sitting in silence. "What do you want?"

"Immediately to business, then?" the demon smirked. "It suits me just fine. I'm here with an offer."

"I've not soul to sell." snapped Castiel with a cold voice. Crowley laughed shortly.

"Never said I wanted it. It just appears I have something you desperately need. It's usually a good point in any contraction." he answered. "You are fighting a war, and I have the solution to your problems."

Castiel clenched his fists with rage. He knew his chances to win were very few. "What can I do besides submit or die?" he asked, not knowing if he was speaking with Crowley or himself.

"Submit or die? What are you, French?" rebutted Crowley with a smirk. "What you need, angel, is a weapon, and I know where to find it."

Castiel hesitated. He pictured a way to defeat Raphael, a way to save the humans without pouring angels' blood. To save Dean without causing him pain. Then he caught Dean with the corner of his eyes, slapping jokingly Sam's nape, and he couldn't.

"No." he said in a low voice.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that and to give you another change." rebutted Crowley, clearly pretending to be polite.

"I said no, demon." repeated Castiel more loudly. "Get out of my sight."

Crowley shook his head.

"Look at you, playing so mighty and noble." he sneered. "You wouldn't low yourself to work with my kind, would you? Don't tell me you really believe your little human pets can consider you as anything different from a tool in their hands. You know the difference between you and me? I know what I am. What are you, Castiel? What exactly are you willing to do?"

Castiel breathed deeply, almost enjoying the cold air in his lungs. Since he had first taken a vessel, he had learnt to see, to perceive and, finally, to _feel _this world, and he was going to protect it.

"I don't know." he answered. "But if the Winchesters had taught me something, is that it doesn't matter how much the situation can seem desperate, there is always a way. What matters is to choose it."

"Adorable." smirked Crowley with a low growl. "But remember my words. You are going to regret it."

He disappeared in a whirl of wind, and Castiel barely resisted the instinct to drop his head in his hands. Had he just thrown away his only chance to defeat Raphael and avoid a second Apocalipse?

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End file.
